On-land fish farms have been around for a decade, in-ocean are old-tech. You know this because fish farm companies monitor my site - 10 seconds after I put up a post, Marine Harvest et al, in Norway, receive it and go: "Not Reid again, we'll have to invent even more spin."
So, some answers to your Times Colonist op-ed: "Challenges of land-based fish farms must be part of the debate"
Well, John, you no doubt know, only 3 of those 255 plants, Atlantic Sapphire, Whole Oceans and Nordic Aquafarms, all setting up on land in the USA, at 225,000mt at grow out, will be more than 200% the size of the BC industry. As consumers now want on-land, they will wipe out your US market - unless you are on land.
John: One in five people working for a BC salmon farmer is of First Nations heritage.
A: The Union of BC Indian Chiefs says 90% of aboriginals don't want fish farms in the ocean. Both Bob Chamberlin and Stewart Phillips have said this. As below, even if 1 of 5 were correct, that is only 164 jobs. This is peanuts compared with the wild salmon economy.
John: A 2017 study found BC's salmon farming industry supported 6,600 jobs.
A: I looked at the study, commissioned and paid for by fish farms, and found they used Stats Can and BC Stats figures; however, they decided to bump the BC Stats by 50% and add them to Stats Can. Sorry, that is false.
Note that BC Stats started with Stats Can figures, then decided they were inflated. The report has a long section on the caveats on the original statistics, and what they did to amend them. Not so the industry document.
BC Stats says 1,700 multiplier jobs. That means the industry figure is 390% too high. That is it is false.
And John, I did my own investigation and found there are only 820 actual jobs in BC fish farms. That means, even if you were being fair and truthful, there are only 164 aboriginal jobs in fish farms in the entire province. That is very few.
John: the food salmon farming provides is important. Almost three quarters of the salmon harvested in BC each year is raised on farms.
A: The food is important to fish farms companies who make very high profit. The food is only afforded as a luxury by the first world mouths, most of the world's people can't afford it. And it takes 5.76B forage fish to feed one harvest in BC to harvest.
Wild salmon are pressured by many factors today. Here is my list; freshwater habitat restoration, DFO, fish farms and climate change. We need to use the precautionary principle, and take fish farms out of the ocean, and BC needs to fund habitat restoration through the Pacific Salmon Foundation.
Here are the profit margins in Norway:
In 2016
John: it provides a sustainable alternative to eating wild fish, which are under ... pressure from overfishing, climate change and loss of habitat.
A: 1. No it kills 5.76B wild fish to bring in one crop. And it is a net loss in protein as it kills protein to make protein: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/10/fish-farms-kill-billions-of-wild-fish.html.
2. And the science says wild salmonids are killed to over 50% in countries with in-ocean fish farms: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2013/01/fish-farms-kill-more-than-50-of-wild.html.
3. And the Sea Around Us document on the reduction fisheries to produce your fish feed says of the top 20 wild forage fish species, 19 are either collapsing, poorly managed or both: http://www.seaaroundus.org/doc/publications/books-and-reports/2016/End_Use_Reconstruction_Report.pdf.
Norway has been singled out by this document as wiping out the jack mackerel off Chile, to feed fish farm fish. That is not sustainable. It is killing off salmonids and ocean forage fish.
John: The science tells us that ocean-based farms and wild fish can coexist successfully.
A: see the item directly above this one. Your assertion is false.
John: Our industry is responsibly managing issues such as sea lice.
A: Go look at this post about Cermaq/DFO mismanagement of lice in Clayoquot Sound in 2018: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-silent-spring-syndrome-clayoquot.html. And as for diseases, it is furunculosis for Marine Harvest, IHN for Cermaq and Grieg Seafood, with the latter losing a quarter of a million salmon in 2018 to an algal bloom. In Atlantic Canada, the CFIA has found ISA a dozen times in 2018 and the year is not yet over: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/10/isa-in.html.
And DFO is so conflicted, it has to be sued to prevent PRV virus fish that fish farms put in the water. This is not responsible management on fish farm or DFO's part: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/07/dfo-has-to-be-sued-to-prevent-diseased.html.
John:"There is also an opportunity to advance more closed-containment systems in the ocean to complement the expansion in aquaculture needed to meet growing human demand.'
A: Marine Harvest is spending $100M in Norway for closed containment and on land. However, fish farms version of closed is tanks that save them from lice, but allow them to pass sewage, disease and so on, out from the tank.
Norway gives out free licences to set up on land they have grown so fed up with in-ocean fish farms, that now want to pollute on a global level by setting up in the open ocean and spew far more waste than currently. Old-tech fish farms in Norway have piles of up to 45 feet of sewage under them.
In Norway, the most recent licences for in-ocean sold for, get this, $32- to $40-million, that's how much profit there is in the business. See: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/08/increase-license-fees-to-32-to-40.html.
As for growing demand, that is because the industry makes so much money they can advertise globally, put up fake news sites, put up fake sites of supposedly innocent individuals doing posts on how badly fish farms get treated and so on. Go back and read just how manipulative global fish farms are about controlling their industry spin, on the chemicals found in farmed fish in Scotland: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2011/10/key-document-fish-farm-tactics.html.
And John, let's be honest here, the BC industry uses the same PR firm that taught tobacco CEOS not to know that cigarettes cause cancer, decades after the rest of us did. See: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/07/fish-farms-big-tobacco-pretty-much-same.html.
And also see: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/02/big-toobacco-big-fish-farms-pretty-much.html. You can find the third article on this site yourself.
John: I welcome the minister's call for feasibility review on closed containment. 'Ocean farmers are innovators, by nature and in nature.
A: It is sad that DFO in Ottawa does not get that fish farms are a sunset industry in BC, and that no one wants them in the water anymore.
As for being innovators, fish farms only make changes when the public complains about their problems. They are reactionary. If they were not, they would all be on land by now. Everywhere fish farms go the public comes to overwhelmingly reject them. See this global list:
https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2017/05/global-citizens-call-for-on-land-fish.html.
A current example from Tasmania is Huon taking its nets out of the water early after a disease issue that made the government say they had to get out: From my BAD NEWS BITES post: 375. Protests - Huon, Tasmania moves pens early, diseased fish: https://www.seafoodnews.com/Story/1122191/Facing%2DProtests%2DHuon%2DAquaculture%2DMoves%2DPens%2Dout%2Dof%2DNorfolk%2DBay%2Da%2DMonth%2DEarly
By the way, my BAD NEWS BITES is almost uip to 4,000 problems in the global aquaculture/fish farm industry in three years, that is how bad fish farms are. Here is one post: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/08/bad-news-bites-aug-20-2018.html.
John:The International Salmon Farmers Association, has cited no fewer than 16 studies saying all on land 'carries environmental challenges... for land, water and electricity.
A: John, part of the reason that people don't trust fish farms is that they do self serving studies, like the one you cite. And the one that had the fictitious number of jobs in BC, that I took apart at the beginning of this post.
And, here is my post on 255 on-land fish farm systems around the world: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html. When there are 20,000 actual on-land fish farms around the world, don't you think it looks a bit silly to claim it can't be done?
And that post is lead out with dozens of studies that show on-land is better in a cost comparison base, and also has all those environmental benefits of not using the ocean as a free, open sewer.
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One more thing: Tromso, in Norway, Nov, 2018 has just refused to have anymore in-ocean fish farms. It is fed up with the environmental damage of in-ocean fish farms. Going forward, all new fish farms have to be on land: https://itromso.alda.no/bestillpluss?6&artRefId=17922088&aviskode=IT&targetUrl=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.itromso.no%252F%253Fservice%253DpaywallRedirect%2526articleUrl%253Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.itromso.no%252Fpluss%252Farticle17922088.ece.
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