News we found of interest this week

By Stephanie Ip, The Province June 10, 2015

Land, ho! The ninth annual B.C. Shellfish & Seafood Festival is taking over the Comox Valley beginning this weekend — and seafood lovers had better batten down the hatches.

“We’re hopeful that this can become a real premier event in B.C. for people that are interested in food, for the foodie folks, and for the people who want to see a great place in the Comox Valley,” said Jeremy Dunn, executive director with the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association. The festival, which will unfold over 10 days between June 12 and 21, has been hosted in the Comox Valley since its inception.

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2015-06-11: Cermaq Canada has achieved another landmark milestone! This week the company was the first in Canada to have multiple sites certified to the ASC standard.

“This certification represents over a year of hard work and dedication by our employees. It has also helped us identify new opportunities for improvement in the way we farm salmon,” said Fernando Villarroel, Cermaq Canada’s Chief Operating Officer. “We are very proud of our team here, and their dedication to bringing us to this achievement.” The certified farms are the company’s Bare Bluff and McIntyre Lake farms, which are located in Clayoquot Sound on the West Coast of Vancouver Island and operate under a protocol agreement with the Ahousaht First Nation. The certification means that the salmon harvested from those farms meet the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC)’s standards for Responsible Aquaculture Farming.

 

BCSFA, June 11, 2015

CAMPBELL RIVER, B.C., June 11, 2015 /3BL Media/ – Salmon farmers in B.C. continue to reach significant milestones on their way to achieving 100% ‘Gold Standard’ third-party certification by 2020 with the announcement of two further salmon farms certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council.  Cermaq Canada has announced that it is North America’s first salmon farming company to have achieved ASC certification for multiple farms.  They are joining Marine Harvest Canada as the only suppliers of ASC certified salmon grown in North America. Only 46 salmon farms around the world have achieved this stringent certification first developed by the World Wildlife Fund.

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Our CEO: Farmed #salmon is safe, most criticisms based on dated myths http://www.bnn.ca/Video/player.aspx?vid=629124 … #aquaculture

Monday, June 08, 2015 - 02:03

Fourteen salmon farmers - representing half the global industry - have delivered their first report on sustainability. As Hayley Platt reports the Global Salmon Initiative was set up two years ago to safeguard the environmental and financial health of the industry.

GSI ‏@GSI_salmon  

Hear @ASC_aqua and @WWF talk about the launch of the #sustainability report - https://youtu.be/PXzwVuHdEHo  @Economist_WOS

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MHC,  June 8, 2015 – Campbell River, B.C.

Marine Harvest Canada has filed an appeal regarding the Federal Court’s recent decision concerning aquaculture regulations and the transfer of salmon from freshwater hatcheries to ocean-based farms. The company cites errors in fact and law as grounds for the appeal.

 

BC News Room, , June 8, 2015

POWELL RIVER - Fifteen local people will be trained in land-based aquaculture systems, fulfilling the need for workers in this industry, thanks to more than $362,000 in government Community and Employer Partnership funding to Excel Career College.

 

FishfarmingXpert, June 9, 2014

Grieg Seafood has revealed its successful marketing tactics for its premium "Skuna Bay" salmon.

Regional Director for Grieg Seafood’s Canadian operations Stewart Hawthorn told an audience during the Aquaculture Canada 2015 conference last week that the company’s venture into the premium farmed salmon market has been a success. Their Skuna Bay farmed Atlantic salmon has already been featured at the Kentucky Derby and the US Open Tennis Tournament. Hawthorn also described how chefs at the James Beard Foundation in New York had visited Grieg’s farms on the west coast of Vancouver island and how they came away very impressed. Some of the required quality features of these “craft-raised” salmon are:

 

Deep Trekker, Kiara Vallier June 11, 2015

Last week, our team had the pleasure of attending the Aquaculture Canada 2015 conference in British Columbia. During the conference we had the chance to learn about the aquaculture industry from a number of different professionals, site managers, researchers, scientists and students. As the days progressed we became more and more excited about an opportunity we had to visit a Marine Harvest Aquaculture site for Salmon in the waters around Campbell River.

I posted 12 photos on Facebook in the album "Van Isle 360 Yacht Race arrives at Hardwicke Island salmon farm" http://fb.me/1U4XrrXKZ 

.@NOAA + Canada’s #DFO begin new partnership for greater cooperation in marine #aquaculture management: http://1.usa.gov/1Mj2xvt

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University of Victoria researcher finds unusual 'squishy' zooplankton in warmer water

CBC News Posted: Jun 08, 2015

A University of Victoria oceanographer studying the so-called "warm blob" of water off the B.C. coast has observed unusual, "squishy" visitors from the south — and that could be bad news for young salmon. John Dower, who just returned from a research cruise north of Vancouver Island, said he saw remarkably high amounts of tiny animals called zooplankton in the "blob," a huge mass of ocean water about 2 degrees warmer than normal. And the varieties he saw are normally found off northern California — not Canada.

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Aquaculture Aware retweeted  - Euclid Fish Company ‏@EuclidFishCo  

Talk about a perfect summer salmon recipe! Strawberry Basil Salsa on Salmon sounds delicious http://ow.ly/O8gcj

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