Aquaculture improving?..The Fish Farm Thread



And record # the previous yr....maybe a new thread on Norways sportfishing should be started?
 
While its great that the crap is being removed from the oceans, surely the aquaculture industry should be paying for the biggest cost. Give the taxpayers a break !
 
The review board ruling is a victory for seafood farmer Cooke Aquaculture, which earlier this month also won a court battle against the activists to farm Pacific Steelhead trout in Washington State.

In that landmark 9-0 ruling, the Washington State Supreme Court had found the claims about disease and sea lice impacting wild stocks, that have been falsely and widely propagated by anti-fish farm activists in the Pacific Northwest, to be without merit.

It follows a seven-decade aquaculture analysis conducted in Scotland that shows that salmon farms have nothing to do with declining wild stocks.
 
It certainly would be less entertaining a day w/o Fabian output from his employment as a PR firm. Thanks for posting, WMY. Just his dribble is not "news" but propaganda. Most outside the industry understand that. Sea West News is not a member of the National News Media Council, neither.

Interesting that he is using Cooke as an example of the industry. One might think that is a poor strategy:



It was the eclipse! (same head of communication for the lobster kill):





And - of course - he also purposely misquotes and misdirects the findings of the study he so proudly totes - one can instead read for oneself at this weblink and see if the authors came to the same conclusions that Dawsondid (spolier: they did not - not about aquaculture):

Here's the background on the issue discussed in the Dawson PR piece:




So Dawson's magically transformed the story of how a panel that was hand picked (not clear how or based on what qualifications and associations) solely by a provincial Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister (rather than accepting nominations from other user groups and vetting applicants as is normal & professional) refuses to review tenure boundaries as envisioned by the 2014 independent Doelle-Lahey aquaculture regulatory review into a feel-good "Cooke's a great example" story and the "industry has no impacts on wild stocks."

As "IF". George Orwell would be proud... maybe not.. but definitely not surprised. The Ministry of Truth is always in charge of open net-pen operations both federally and provincially - coast to coast.
 
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Here's the real story:

N.S. Aquaculture Review Board not fulfilling public complaint role envisioned in 2014 report​


Francis Campbell · Multimedia Journalist | Posted: Dec. 3, 2021, 12:07 p.m. | Updated: Dec. 5, 2021, 1:56 p.m. | 8 Min Read

The province's Aquaculture Review Board seems only a shell of what was envisioned in the 2014 report that recommended establishing it in the first place.

The board was initially supposed to be an independent body to hear complaints from community members who were close to operating open-pen farming sites,” said Simon Ryder-Burbidge, marine campaign co-ordinator for the Ecology Action Centre, an environmental charity in Nova Scotia.

“The idea was that this would be a place for people to air grievances and vie for the consideration of revoked licences in some cases, where operators were not operating in good faith with regard to environment or community.”

On its website, the review board is described as “an independent decision-making body with a mandate to decide on aquaculture applications in marine areas for new sites and expansions to existing sites.”

Meinhard Doelle and Bill Lahey, in their 2014 independent Doelle-Lahey aquaculture regulatory review, proposed the creation of a review board that would consider public applications to have a licence revoked where there was “clear evidence of a site’s biophysical unsuitability or of a pattern of substantial non-compliance with regulatory requirements.”

Regulations and amendments to the Fisheries and Coastal Resources Act the following year did not include a public grievance role for the new board.

In its detailed December 2015 response to the new aquaculture regulations, the Ecology Action Centre voiced apprehension that the public was denied an avenue to have concerns about “persistently problematic fish farms heard by an impartial body, and to have those concerns acted upon.”

Fisheries and Aquaculture Minister Steve Craig declined an interview request for this article. The department said he cannot speak to regulatory decisions made by a previous government.

A Fisheries and Aquaculture Department spokesman said the Progressive Conservative government is committed to maintaining an effective and modern regulatory framework for the industry and plans to begin a comprehensive review of the regulations in the new year.

Department spokesman Bruce Nunn said in an email that aquaculture sites are monitored regularly by department officials and compliance officers with the Environment Department for regulatory compliance.

“Licences will not be renewed, or operators given permission to restock their sites, if sites are deemed biophysically unsuitable,” he said.

The public can contact the Environment Department if they have concerns about regulatory compliance on aquaculture sites, Nunn said.

“The investigation, compliance and enforcement division of that department has the ability to investigate alleged regulation violations and can issue summary offence tickets,” he said.

The Ecology Action Centre’s apprehension from 2015 came to the forefront again during the review board’s November hearing of an application by Kelly Cove Salmon Ltd., owned by seafood giant Cooke Aquaculture, for a boundary amendment to its marine finfish lease at its Rattling Beach site in the Annapolis Basin in Digby County.

The three-member board, chaired by retired lawyer Jean McKenna, denied intervenor applications for the hearing from the Ecology Action Centre, the St. Marys Bay Protectors and the Healthy Bays Network, granting intervenor status only to Gregory Heming, a landowner living on a 1930s Annapolis River farmstead about 2.5 kilometres downstream from the Rattling Beach salmon farm site.

Steve Craig, the Nova Scotia minister of fisheries and aquaculture: 'My focus is to take what was done in the past, recognize perhaps the shortcomings of that but certainly implement the processes and the regulations now that’s going to suit us well in the future.' - Francis Campbell
Ryder-Burbidge said the intent from the Doelle-Lahey report was an overhaul of aquaculture regulations “that would enable widespread public participation” when it comes to siting decisions.

“By disallowing environmental groups like ours or nearby community groups … you’re losing a lot of pretty critical input from the stakeholders I think the aquaculture review board was supposed to hear from,” he said. “The process right now is set up in such a way that it would be nearly impossible for an individual community member to participate adequately, in a way that Cooke and the province are able to.”

An affidavit received from Ronald Neufeld, who lived with his wife from 2007 to 2013 in Port Wade on the Annapolis Basin, immediately in front of the Rattling Beach site, said Kelly Cove Salmon took over the 8.75-hectare lease and licence at Rattling Beach in 2004.

Neufeld, acting on behalf of the intervenor, said although the lease and licence have been renewed several times since 2004, Kelly Cove has never been authorized to use an area larger than 8.75 hectares.

continued below...
 
Neufeld said he suspected, and then confirmed with measurements from a hand-held GPS device, that Kelly Cove was operating in violation of its licence, working a site that was three times the size of its lease.

During the hearing, Kelly Cove business development manager Jeffery Nickerson confirmed that its existing lease would allow for only three to four cages and the farming of 120,000 salmon at Rattling Beach but the company currently operates 20 cages that accommodate 660,000 penned salmon on a 29-hectare site.

Neufeld contacted former Liberal premier Stephen McNeil and former aquaculture minister Keith Colwell with his complaint about company violations. He obtained documentation from both the Fisheries and Aquaculture and Environment departments up until 2015 that confirmed inspectors continued to document lease and licence violations at Rattling Beach but nothing was done to revoke the licence or correct the problem.

“Despite my comments, in July 2016, (Fisheries and Aquaculture) granted Kelly Cove a 10-year licence renewal and a 20-year lease renewal for the Rattling Beach site,” Neufeld wrote.

Joel Richardson, vice-president of public relations with Cooke, told The Chroncle Herald at the completion of the recent hearing that Kelly Cove was not applying to expand its operation and that it was "simply incorrect" to assert that the company had been operating illegally.

“We’ve been operating with permission of the regulator,” he said.

Richardson said GPS technology was not as accurate in the past as it is today and that prior to 2015, the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department did not require moorings and anchors for aquaculture sites to be inside the lease boundaries.

That regulation changed in 2015 and shellfish and finfish operators were given until 2016 to apply to the board to bring sites into compliance, Richardson said.

“We followed the regulation and carried on with the same size farm and the same operation and that was allowed,” Richardson said. “We submitted the Rattling Beach application in 2016 and we’ve been waiting since 2016 to get before the aquaculture review board.”

At the recent hearing, Sarah McDonald, an environmental lawyer with Ecojustice Canada who was representing Heming, questioned a department official about lease non-compliance.

Lawyer Allison Campbell, representing the Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, objected to the implied criticism and argued the department's enforcement history was not relevant to the boundary application.

McKenna and the board agreed.

"Nothing is to be gained by calling evidence that is an attempt to criticize the enforcement branch,” of the Environment and Fisheries and Aquaculture departments, McKenna said.

"We are not a board of inquiry into the appropriateness or inappropriateness of aquaculture in the province."

Ryder-Burbidge said the company’s non-compliance with lease and licence obligations transcends the entire process, and the board’s decision not to allow discussion about it is very problematic.

“When you’re hearing the province give a bunch of testimony about their mitigation measures to prevent escaped farm salmon or the measures that the company is supposed to take when sea lice outbreaks occur, that entire testimony is predicated on the government’s ability to ensure those regulations are making an impact in the water,” he said.

“I don’t know how we would assess the capacity of those mitigation and enforcement measures other than to look at their historical performance.”

The board asked lawyers for the company, the department and the intervenor to submit written closing arguments on the boundary amendment application before it renders a decision sometime in the new year.
 

FYI here is an article by DC Reid published in the Times Colonist on Jan 22, 2022:


Re your article on Jan 18 about fish farms laying off staff:

Mowi complains that moving fish farms from the Discovery Islands is devastating news for 80 staff at the processing plant it says it will close. There are a few things that should be said:
1. Mowi could open-up some on-land fish farms and thus have product for the processing plant and it would not have to fire staff. My list of on-land has 383 farms around the world. Putting fish farms on land is common, though Mowi doesn’t think of it.
2. What is required is retraining for its staff, who then could move into other areas of fish farming and not be fired. If Mowi won’t do it, and prefers to fire its staff, the government should start a retraining program. Simple and straightforward.
3. Mowi and the other mega companies view staff as replaceable. For example, Norway puts out ten times the salmon that are produced in Canada. They use 20% of the staff employed in Canada and have laid off the rest because of introduced efficiency measures. The scientific paper on this one was written by Inga Milewski and it is easy to find. Once the measures are brought to Canada, 80% of staff will be fired. So, no one needs to be blamed other than Mowi. After all, once it introduces the efficiency measures here, they could lay off 80% of BC staff and still have enough to produce salmon on par with Europe.
DC Reid

 

 

A looming lice crisis

"DFO has rules about lice levels on fish farms to protect migrating wild juvenile salmon. But it turns out, even when fish farms break these rules, there are zero consequence!"
Is a parasite crisis on the horizon? Watershed Watch
Nothing new....

B.C. fish farms regularly under-count sea lice, potentially putting wild salmon at risk: study

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/brit...rms-undercount-sea-lice-salmon-risk-1.5718322

DFO have had a long history of non enforcement of Fish Farm regulations and rules.
God help you thought if they catch you with a hook not meeting regulations.
 
Anyone know how these phasing out of Atlantic Salmon Fish Farms are proceeding?

"Washington State has taken a precautionary approach to protecting wild salmon."
"Governor Inslee has signed into law a bill to phase out Atlantic salmon farming from Washington State waters. Farms will cease operations at the conclusion of their current leases. The phase out will be complete by 2022."
"It remains to be seen whether the B.C. government will follow Washington State’s precautionary lead. Numerous B.C. salmon farm tenures are up for renewal this June"
 
Anyone know how these phasing out of Atlantic Salmon Fish Farms are proceeding?

"Washington State has taken a precautionary approach to protecting wild salmon."
"Governor Inslee has signed into law a bill to phase out Atlantic salmon farming from Washington State waters. Farms will cease operations at the conclusion of their current leases. The phase out will be complete by 2022."
"It remains to be seen whether the B.C. government will follow Washington State’s precautionary lead. Numerous B.C. salmon farm tenures are up for renewal this June"
Last I heard Washington state was transitioning to net pen steelhead over Atlantics.
 
A quick search shows you are right Dave. Thanks

State Supreme Court OKs Cooke Aquaculture steelhead farming​

Company partnering with Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe for Port Angeles Harbor farm
 
BC Salmon Farmers go on the offensive;
As ironic as her last name is - yes - the industry is concerned and putting their big hitters out there to field the media. Their backs are against the wall.

Ruth was Executive Director of the British Columbia Shellfish Growers Association; then the Executive Director of the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance; then the Senior Advisor to the BCSFA; and now the Acting Chief Executive Officer of the BCSFA after Fraser either quit or was asked to - like the coach of a loosing team. I think the industry has lost it's buddy-buddy relationship that they had w every current & consecutive Fisheries Minister up to and including the notorious Gail Shea who was easily mislead, IMHO. I think that this change is a shock to the industry.

They have become quite accustomed to getting what they want. I don't think they thought any of Cohen's recommendations that affected them were ever seriously contemplated as being instituted by DFO - esp. since certain industry-friendly higher-ups in DFO kept telling them not to worry. The last Fisheries Minister pushed for this and payed the price. She was successful as far as the Discovery Islands go. The industry saw that as well, and panicked.

Expect more of the same strategy and shenanigans tho: labelling every criticism of the operations of this industry as coming from some evil uniformed "activist"; while playing up the John Smith connection and hiding the Ma'a̱mtagila history - claiming FNs support the open net-pen industry - while simultaneously taking them to court when they very clearly tell them "NO". They really have nothing else. Their propaganda has become ineffective. Great time to be an effective or even barely competent industry PR person right about now - you could name your pr$ce.

Should be at the least entertaining...
 
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