B.C. salmon farms spawn debate about wild fish

Canadian Press
February 8, 2003 10:53 PM ET

SONORA ISLAND, B.C. — Before setting foot on the salmon farm on this remote island on the fjord-like east coast of Vancouver Island, there's a brief but necessary safety ritual to complete.

Every employee, inspector or visitor must step into a tiny tub filled about two centimetres deep with a brown iodine-based solution.

The ovadine solution bath -- similar to what was used on land farms to prevent the spread of swine flu -- disinfects shoe soles and helps protect the salmon farm from unwanted diseases and germs.

It's a tiny step, but it walks deep into the heart and soul of British Columbia.

Politics, scandals, protests, aboriginals and economics are all caught in British Columbia's salmon farming net.

Tim O'Hara, a microbiologist, says he moved to Vancouver Island from Scotland about three years ago because he wants to continue working in an industry that's growing worldwide.

"I've been in this business for 27 years," he said. "I've seen it grow from very early pioneering days to what I think now is a sustainable industry."

There are disturbing economic and health issues associated with fish farming, says Lynn Hunter, a former federal New Democratic Party MP and an aquaculture specialist with the pro-environment David Suzuki Foundation.

But on a gut level what people can't stomach is the thought of raising in a cage a species known for its wild spirit, she says.

"Salmon are almost a religious icon for some people," Hunter says.

"They are a symbol of what British Columbia is. It's a really kind of a majestic story, and now we've got these corporations taking steps to rid our streams of those fish."

Environmental and aboriginal groups are starting to turn their sights on salmon farms in much the same way they did on the forest industry. Those confrontations produced hundreds of arrests, countless blockades and damaging international boycotts, Hunter says.

"There are some among us -- even if it's a gold-plated ribbon around a fish farm -- they don't want it," she says. "They are wanting to defend the wild salmon with everything they have."

Hunter says the public should start worrying when people like John Fraser, a former speaker of the House of Commons and a former Conservative federal fisheries minister, issues an advisory that declines of pink salmon stocks on Vancouver Island's Broughton Archipelago last fall could be linked to sea lice infestations associated with salmon farms in the area.

"In numerical terms, the number of pink salmon spawners in the Broughton Archipelago decreased from 3.615 million fish to 147,000 fish," said Fraser, chairman of the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council, in a letter to federal Fisheries Minister Robert Thibault.

The B.C. government announced Thursday the strategic fallowing (shutting down) of fish farms in the Broughton area to allow the spring migration of pink salmon.

On Sonora Island, located about 300 kilometres northwest of Victoria, the scene is postcard perfect: deep blue ocean, not a highway in sight and the only noise the splashing sound of Atlantic salmon leaping about their net pens.

"We've got 12 cages," says John Koopman, pointing to the pens holding more than 300,000 Atlantic salmon.

"They are 24 metres square and the nets are 12 metres deep, and in a cage we'll typically put 30,000 fish,'' he says. "Not too complicated."

Koopman, a production manager with Omega Salmon Group Ltd., of nearby Campbell River, says the fish farming industry will face questions about its environmental and economic viability for years to come.

But fish farming on B.C.'s coastline is here to stay, and he envisions a day when fish farmers and commercial salmon fishermen, whose ranks have been decimated due to declining wild stocks, work together.

"A lot of people who have worked in the traditional fishing industry they hate us, because they think we are going to take their jobs away," he says. "But in their high season it wouldn't make sense for us to be harvesting."

Omega, a Norwegian fish farming company, has been mentioned in a brewing scandal that recently led to the resignation from cabinet of John van Dongen, the former agriculture, food and fisheries minister.

Van Dongen said he was stepping aside after he revealed he was under RCMP investigation for his handling of a salmon farming file.

Documents obtained by CBC television show provincial Fisheries Ministry staff battling efforts by the province's Water, Land and Air Protection Ministry to charge Stolt Sea Farm Inc., under the federal Fisheries Act, in connection with the escape of up to 55,000 Atlantic salmon in August 2000.

The Opposition New Democrats immediately questioned the credibility of van Dongen's cabinet replacement, Stan Hagen, because he received $3,500 in campaign donations from Omega.

"I don't see that as much of an issue," says Keith Bullough, Omega's chief financial officer.

Omega made campaign donations to two B.C. Liberal candidates on northern Vancouver Island, Rod Visser and Hagen, he says.

"The survival of rural coastal communities depended on a change in government," Bullough says.

Coastal Vancouver Island communities have been devastated by downturns in the forest and fishing industries.

Fish farming has the potential to rejuvenate the ailing communities, O'Hara says.

A seven-year moratorium on expanding fish farming in B.C. was lifted last September.

There are currently more than 120 licensed fish farms in British Columbia producing more than 50,000 tonnes of fish that is worth almost $350 million annually.

The East Coast salmon-farming industry is smaller. There are 96 salmon farms in New Brunswick, producing about 35,000 tonnes annually. Newfoundland and Nova Scotia have a few salmon farms.

Norway, the world's largest salmon farming nation, produces about 500,000 tonnes annually.

Chile produces more than 400,000 tonnes and Scotland about 130,000 tonnes.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation says research found 80 per cent of salmon in some rivers in Norway are of farmed origin.

But the Norwegian School of Veterinary Sciences reported that consumer and environmental groups who battled the salmon farming industry during the 1980s and 1990s over fish diseases and escapes now are working together with the industry to control escapes and disease issues.

"One is the joint monitoring and control of sea lice in salmon farms,'' said the school.

The B.C. government estimates aquaculture expansion over the next decade could lead to more than $1 billion in economic activity and up to 12,000 new jobs.

O'Hara says he can see more than 300 fish farms in British Columbia within the next decade.

"As an outsider, I just get the impression that B.C. is a province that is looking for more funding in things like education, health care," he says. "But we seem to be very reluctant as a province to actually support industry that's going to generate the wealth that's going to pay for these things."

Hunter suggests governments lost their opportunity to sell the public on salmon farming when they quietly allowed the industry to be introduced into Canada with little debate and monitoring.

"It's all been sort of backroom kind of stuff," she says. "There's never been a debate in either the federal house or the provincial legislature about the wisdom of even going ahead with this industry."

The lack of public consultation gave rise to fears in the environmental movement that governments are preparing to allow big companies to control the public fish resource.

"This is a nightmare scenario, but I think this tells you why it evokes such passion," she says.

Aboriginals say fish farming threatens their way of life.

The B.C. legislature was the site of a particularly foul protest last summer when aboriginals dumped garbage cans of rotting farmed salmon.

The stench of rotting fish is something the aboriginals who live near fish farms say they must endure.

"Our access to our traditional foods is a major link to our traditional way of life," Chief William Cranmer told a Suzuki Foundation-funded inquiry into B.C. salmon farming.

"To watch this being destroyed is to witness genocide."

Bullough says salmon farming has environmental issues, but not to the extent that they warrant the shutdown of the industry.

"The debate has been blown out of proportion and it has done so to meet certain agendas at the expense of other parties," he says. "The David Suzuki Foundation may not be the be-all and end-all of where you get your salmon farming information."

Bullough says salmon farmers plan to take their story to the public. The first step is a rally of aquaculture supporters Saturday in Nanaimo.

"We have not done a very good job telling our side of the story," Bullough says. "We have to some extent trusted the process that we believed and hoped would be based on the best scientific information available.

"But if you asked Joe in the street in Vancouver about salmon farming, you would get the belief that Atlantic salmon are colonizing our streams."

Of the more than one million documented Atlantic salmon escapes from B.C. fish farms and in Washington state over the last decade, about 300 have been found in the wild, he said.

"I would say that is evidence that colonization is not taking place," Bullough says.<

Atlantic salmon will compete with wild salmon for food and habitat if they manage to survive in the wild, says Shelby Temple, a former fish farm worker in Newfoundland and Brazil and a current University of Victoria doctoral candidate in fish biology.

"The fact that they even eat food, that's enough," he says. "They don't have to actually aggressively compete. That doesn't matter if there's a limited resource of food."

Temple says research into Atlantic salmon colonization of B.C. waters is still in its infancy and it is too early to draw conclusions.

O'Hara says an attempt by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to introduce Atlantic salmon to B.C. waters in the 1930s failed.

John Volpe, a University of Alberta fisheries scientist, has launched a coast-wide effort this month to determine if Atlantic salmon are surviving in B.C. waters.

Back at Sonora Island, Koopman drops fish pellets from his hand into the net cage and smiles: "This is a lot quieter than pigs."