History in the making?
Courier-Islander February 2, 2011
Is history being made right in our back yard?
It could be.
On Friday 50,000 chinook salmon were installed into the world's first closed containment tank of its kind. The tank is located in Middle Bay just north of Campbell River and as of press time the chinook experienced very low mortality during their shipping from west Vancouver Island and are now exhibiting all the traits facility operators were hoping for from healthy fish.
It is also quite interesting the arrival of the fish co-incided with an international seafood summit in Vancouver.
Rob Walker of Agrimarine Industries, a partner in the project, is at the summit and says the news of the closed containment tank and its initial successes have spread through the conference like wild fire.
"I've met people from all over the world, the environmental community as well as industry players and there's an awful lot of excitement about this," he said (see page A4 in today's edition.)
Is it too early to welcome the technology with open arms? Yes it is. Is it too early to hope that a new era in fish farming may be blossoming right before our eyes? No it is not.
A DFO study apparently figures the return on investment for this kind of project would be minus 10 per cent. With something that is in its infancy and with more technological advances yet to come, minus 10 per cent is quite encouraging.
