28 FISH farming has local impact
the province’s door. “Salmon farming has a
total impact of $1.1 billion to the BC economy and accounts directly for more than 5,000 total jobs,” explains Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association. “Those jobs are typically year- round and pay 30% above the median provincial income.”
Salmon farming company
employees work in hatcheries to spawn and care for the young fry during their first year. Workers staff the farms that grow them to adult size, harvest the fish, process them (delivered fresh to retail in 36 to 48 hours) and work the boats that support the farms. There are also scientists working for the companies in the areas of fish health and breeding.
And the farmers buy local.
All the feed comes from companies in the Lower Mainland. Salmon cages, the barges that support the farms, the boats that harvest the fish and ferry the workers to the sites, and the divers that inspect and clean the nets all originate in BC and mostly from Vancouver Island. In addition, local First Nations participate in raising 78% of BC salmon through 20 economic and social partnerships. “About 30% of the direct
employment of BC’s four largest salmon farming companies is First Nations,” Dunn points out.
Early days It’s a young business.
Around 40 years ago, coastal entrepreneurs cobbled together fish netting with log booms, tossed in some baby Chinook or Coho salmon and
hand-fed them to fatten them up. Some died, some swam away, some were eaten by seals and sea lions, and a lot of lessons were learned. Today, it’s much more sophisticated.
I saunter along a three-
metre steel walkway that joins the storm-worthy pens, each holding up to 75,000 fish. (I wish I had my fly rod.) With warm summer temperatures increasing fish appetite, automatic feeders deliver 17 tonnes of feed a day across the site. Computers like the one Derkson monitors track water temperature and dissolved oxygen while electric barriers protect the salmon from predation.
Chinook focus Creative Salmon has
focused on Chinook, an indigenous species, but Atlantic salmon is the species of choice for all other commercial growers, partly because they adapt well to domestication and partly because their feed conversion is better.
“Salmon are the most efficient of all commercially fed animals,” Dunn points out. “As they are cold blooded, they don’t spend energy on staying warm. And because they are supported by water, they don’t have to build big bones to fight gravity.” On average, 1.2 kg of feed produces a kilogram of salmon. It takes 1.9 kg of feed to get a kilogram of chicken while some beef animals can require up to 9.1 kg of feed per kilogram of body weight. Back in the office, Derkson tells us his job, six days on and six days off, is awesome. “Look at the view,” he says. “I really enjoy my time off.”
The 30-year-old Marine Harvest Canada Harwicke Island salmon farm sits 20 minutes across Johnstone Strait from the village of Sayward on northern Vancouver Island. BC SALMON FARMERS PHOTO
Would you rather be a fish?
Adult broodstock are kept at a hatchery and salmon are spawned, hatched and spend their entire first year in fresh water in a land-based facility. By carefully adjusting water temperature and lighting, hatcheries are able to manipulate growth, giving farmers the ability to stock pens over several months and cultivate a year-round supply of adult fish for market. Once in the ocean pen, salmon reach their market weight of five to six kilograms in 18 to 24 months. Several interest groups lobby to have salmon farms located on land and there are several pilot projects in Canada, the US and Europe. The technology works, but not the cost. All the projects have been heavily supported by government and special interest group money.
“The price we would have to charge to
make a land-based salmon farm viable would simply be prohibitive,” a spokesman for Marine Harvest said last year. “We want to have more people eating salmon, not fewer.” An industry insider of 35 years has an
interesting point. He wonders with all the free-range movements in animal production, why are people so keen to move salmon production onto land? Chickens are moving out of those small cages and onto the barn floor and even out into the sunshine. Indeed, the eggs at my Save-On Foods cost more for free run (in the barn) and even more for free range (outside). The tag line is “hens that have been allowed to express natural behaviors.” How does a salmon “express natural behaviours” in a plastic tank on land?
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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • AUGUST 2017 nfrom page 27
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