Just How Many Tonnes of Salmon Does Grieg Produce - Or Says it Produces?

Read: https://www.fishfarmingexpert.com/article/grieg-aims-for-35000-gwt-in-british-columbia-by-2025/?utm_source=netflex&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter__31_03_2022.

The problem with fish farms is they say one thing while the reality is something else.

But here is what they say, April 1, 2022 (yes, April Fools Day):

A harvest of 35,000 gwt is more than double the 14,448 gwt that Grieg Seafood BC harvested last year, and more than 50% above the 21,181 gwt harvested in 2020. Grieg’s harvest volumes vary significantly every other year in BC due to local production region arrangements and larger farms with greater capacity on the west coast of Vancouver Island compared to the east coast.

Overall, Grieg aims to increase production volume from 89,327 gwt last year to 130,000 gwt in 2025, with increases from its Rogaland and Finnmark divisions on Norway and 15,000 tonnes from Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, Atlantic Canada. Grieg has eight seawater licences for the bay and has built a hatchery in Marystown, NL. The first fish are due to be stocked in pens this year.

They don't say how much the people from NL and BC want them out of the water.

I'll follow these figures as Grieg has had lots of difficulty over the decades of doing what it says it will do, and is the poor brother compared with Mowi and Cermaq.

And go read my Bad News Bites posts as I am now up to more than 7,000 problems in the fish farm aquaculture world:

"In one mouthful, here are the kind of stories I am finding: boom bust industry, billions made and lost, crisis in lice and disease, bankruptcy, workers fired, executives jumping company to company, dividing big bonuses, fraud, corruption, litigation, conflict of interest with government and scientists, using the ocean as a free open sewer – $10.4 Billion in BC alone, killing of whales, seals and sea lions – more than 12,000 in BC so far, slavery, unpaid labour, taxpayers paying millions for diseased, dead fish – $177 Million in Canada, dueling scientists, weakening of laws, unsustainable feed, illegal fishing, jail sentences, disasters in Norway, Scotland, Chile, Canada, bullying of scientists, governments and anyone critical of their business, cartels, collusion, price fixing, fishing down the food chain to Antarctic krill, carcinogens and persistent organic pollutants, fluoroquinolones, chicken feathers in feed, animal feces in feed, eutrophication in a time of global warming, Malachite Green fungicide in USA seafood, fake industry awards, all the wild salmon in the Pacific ocean, more than a billion, put in peril... it goes on."


Link to 16th Post: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2021/07/bad-news-bites-16th-post.html

Ches Crosbie Response to Mr. Bill Bryden - Aquaculture, May 15, 2019

Hi Ches Crosbie

I have your letter to Mr. Bill Bryden on aquaculture, namely in-ocean fish farms [in NL].

In response to question 2 you state:

“I have been told that there is not any viable land based salmonid aquaculture anywhere

in the world. Such a transition would have to prove to be viable to be successful.”

If you were told this by a government worker, that person needs to be taken off the aquaculture file.

If you were told this by a fish farm company, say Norway’s Grieg, you need to disregard what you have been told, as they are only interested in staying in the ocean, using it as a free, open sewer.

I have a list of nearly 300 on-land fish farm systems, comprising almost 20,000 on-land fish farms around the world: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.

And I have a growing list of positive news stories about on-land fish farms around the world: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2018/11/good-news-post-links-to-on-land-closed.html.

The future is for on-land fish farms. Just look at Atlantic Sapphire in Florida and its on-land plant that aims to produce several times the output of all of Canada’s fish farm industry, and take Canada’s main market.

DC Reid

NL Fish Farms - Placentia Bay, Grief Seafood - The 'Jobs and Revenue' Spin - Wild Salmon and EcoTourism Revenue in BC = $3.92 Billion, Updated June 15, 2017

You will know that Grieg is wanting to enter pristine Placentia Bay, setting up 11 farms, and receiving a license subsidy of $9- to $12-M X 11 = $99- to $132- million (representing the in-ocean license cost from an auction, two years ago, when Norway refused to give out any more in-ocean licenses and is now giving out free licenses to set up on land, to get farms out of the water).

In addition, Grieg says it wants $45 Million from the province, or the project won't go ahead. In other words they want an overall subsidy of $144- to $177- million or they won't set up shop. I'd tell them to go back to Norway and set up on land there, rather than pollute the NL ocean to an extent that their own country, Norway, won't tolerate any more.

One of my Facebook group contacts is for Fishers Against Fish Farms. From it you will get that the Atlantic Canada people are fed up with fish farms in their ocean, and are wondering how much environmental damage they would cause.

One participant got in touch with the government in NL. Here is the quote:

I have raised these concerns in the HOA and stated that there should be a full environmental assessment of any of these proposals. Do you know what I get back? Oh, so you're  against jobs and economic development. You're ‎against the people of the Burning Peninsula. With that said, I'll continue to raise questions and concerns whenever I can.

I told them this: 

The first myth about fish farms is: we promise jobs and revenue. Politicians eat it up without checking the claims out

Well, what happens is that some jobs are created in the boom that replace existing jobs, so no net gain, then the revenue goes out of the country to the companies head office and then to shareholders around the world, then employment drops because they put in lights and feeding machines, then a bust happens, usually disease, and workers are fired, the company goes bankrupt and a bigger fish swallows it up at a bargain price – the industry is ever evolving as a cartel of the biggest.

For example, in BC, DFO and fish farms claim 6,000 jobs; however, the best stats from BC Stats puts the multiplier jobs at 1700, or only 28.3% of what is claimed – and this is all of aquaculture, not simply fish farms.  Over the same period, commercial fishing jobs declined 1700, so no net gain.

I then looked into the actual number of jobs on fish farms and found it is only 820 in BC, or 13.7% of what is claimed, or roughly one in ten of the jobs claimed. If you divide the fish farm/DFO/Government figure by 10 you will be closer to the real number than all the claims.

In the 2008 ISA crisis in Chile, 13,000 workers lost their jobs. Less than 10 years later in the algal bloom crisis of 2016, 5000 workers lost their jobs. In the last week (June 2017), Cermaq laid off 259 more workers to streamline their operations in Chile.

Gray Aqua [in NL] is a classic example of the boom/bust cycle that happens in fish farming all over the world. Placentia Bay is another boom with a price tag subsidy of $99 to $132 for licences + they want $45 mil more up front, or a $177m subsidy, just to start up.

In BC, in the 80s and 90s all the small, home grown farms started with great hopes and were wiped out, losing everything, usually by furunculosis or IHN. They were then bought up by the Norwegians, Marine Harvest, Cermaq, and Grieg Seafood, as in a Norwegian Cartel runs BC fish farming now

Fish farms are not about jobs and revenue. But Grief knows that politicians/bureaucrats are nitwits and don't look into the spin that Grief is telling them. Sad, but true.

 ***

Here are some references: 

But first: I calculated the value of the fish resource in salt-and fresh-water in BC. The conservative figure is $2.52 Billion. The BC Stats figure for all of aquaculture is about $400 million. No contest.

Add to that that eco-tourism in BC is: $1.4 Billion + $2.52 Billion and you have: $3.92Billion.

Here is the original document of stats from the BC Stats report, as well as a link to  the document: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/02/sport-fishing-how-we-tack-up-feb-6-2013.html.

And here is my developing the entire revenue from the fish resource from salt- and fresh-water: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2015/05/salmonfishing-revenue-towers-over.html. I show how to do the calculation so you have the complete picture, and, of course, this is public info as it was published by the Pacific Salmon Foundation. I based all the figures on public published figures, with a CPI adjustment to some.

And remember that fish farm jobs don’t create jobs, they replace jobs that they eliminate, for example, commercial fishing.

Here is a reference for an eco-tourism revenue of $1.5 billion, higher than the conservative figure I have used above: http://www.wilderness-tourism.bc.ca/value.html. 

Note that the entire tourism industry is $13.8 Billion.