Anti- aquaculture activists corrected
A new salmon farm application receives a rough ride from environmentalists, despite having the support from the ultimate authority on environmental stewardship- the local First Nation
FishfarmingXpert, Odd Grydeland, July 12, 2012
When Mainstream Canada signed a Protocol Agreement with the Clayoquot Sound- based Ahousaht First Nation in 2010, the company agreed to close a salmon farm that was located in a channel used by out-migrating Pacific salmon, despite the lack of scientific justification for this closure. But in return, the Ahousaht First Nation agreed to consider the establishment of new salmon farming sites to be operated by Mainstream in their Traditional Territory. When the company submitted a list of six potential locations for a replacement site, the First Nation agreed to support one of those sites after much community discussion. That site is now going through the governmental application process, and one of the local environmental groups is up in arms- making a number of accusations to which Mainstream Canada had the following response earlier this week, suggesting that the activist group got its facts wrong;
A recent public statement by the Friends of Clayoquot Sound gets almost all the facts wrong about our Plover Point farm site application, about IHN, ISA and the Cohen Commission. The site application, which has been in process for two years, is nearly complete. We have provided information during the application process to the public through our website, through open houses held last year and we have also provided information to individuals who asked for it, including members of the Friends of Clayoquot Sound.
Transport Canada completed a Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency screening report last month, and concluded that "the authority is of the opinion that the project is not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects." Despite this report, and despite all the information made available to the group during the past year, the Friends of Clayoquot Sound have made a number of serious errors in their latest statement. We have corrected them here.
Plover Point facts
Plover Point farm, which is proposed in Fortune Channel on the east coast of Meares Island, will not be a 55-hectare farm. The actual farm footprint is 1.25 hectares. The tenure we have applied for from the provincial government is 55 hectares; this is to allow us room underwater to properly anchor the floating pens. Plover Point farm is not a feedlot. Feedlots are used in the beef industry to finish beef cattle, taking them off the range to feed them grain for a few months before harvest. Salmon spend two-thirds of their lives in ocean farms.
Plover Point is not an expansion. It is a new farm site intended to replace our Cormorant farm. Plover Point will allow us to increase fallow times at all our other farm sites while maintaining the same level of production we have now. This will have the effect of reducing our overall environmental impact in Clayoquot Sound. Mainstream Canada has no farm sites in Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation traditional territory. The proposed farm is in Ahousaht First Nation traditional territory, and Ahousaht fully support the site application.
IHN facts
In May, we reported the IHN virus had been confirmed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) at one of our farms, Dixon Bay, in Clayoquot Sound. To protect the health of fish at our other farms in the region, we quickly removed all of the fish from the site. None of the fish from Dixon Bay were sold; they were all composted. Shortly afterwards, testing resulted in a weak positive for IHN virus at our Bawden Point farm. However, two rounds of follow-up testing by CFIA showed no signs of the virus, and no clinical signs of the disease caused by the virus were observed. The site was harvested in June as planned.
Salmon farms do experience disease from time to time, because many viruses and parasites are found naturally in the Pacific Ocean and are carried by wild fish. However, there is no evidence to suggest that disease from well-managed farms pose any serious danger to wild fish. There is plenty of good scientific evidence to show that maintaining good fish health, animal husbandry and proper management of disease is effective at keeping risks to wild fish very low. This is exactly what Mainstream Canada does at all its farms.
Other facts
Dr. Kristi Miller did not find ISA virus in Clayoquot Sound last year. She found something in a preliminary lab test which looks like ISA, but her results could not be replicated and her methods were questioned by other scientists at the Cohen Commission panel where she discussed her test results. The Cohen Commission of Inquiry into the Decline of Fraser River Sockeye Salmon is not an inquiry into salmon farming. It is an investigation into the poor run of Fraser River sockeye in 2009, and is considering a host of possible factors, including climate change, overfishing, pollution, predators and aquaculture.
