DFO Aquaculture Licencing - Posted December 18, 2013

While DFO has yet to respond to the Cohen Report, and took the site down (it's location is next to impossible to find, now) it is moving ahead on licencing regulations for in-ocean fish farm licencing. Cohen said the responsibility for fish farms should be lifted from DFO and DFO should get on with protecting wild salmon in BC. This regulation work was very poorly advertised for those of us who would respond. Here is what I said. You might like to email DFO yourself: feescomments.droitscommentaires@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.

Dear DFO:

BC residents overwhelmingly want fish farms out of our pristine ocean and on land.

You should be transitioning these old-tech dinosaurs to on-land, closed, recirculating systems. We don’t want them fouling our pristine ocean anymore. You need to pay attention to this as the only way forward for these multi-billion dollar Norwegian derivative companies is to: get out of the water, or go back to Norway. The issue is how soon you make a change.

The most recent symposium on closed containment was in Virginia this past September, 2013. Tides Canada maintains a link to the plus fifty presentations. They are even doing closed containment science in Norway for Pete’s sake: http://tidescanada.org/salmon/aquaculture-innovation-workshops-and-reports/.

For my list of 65 different on-land fish farm systems, comprising more than 8,100 actual on-land fish farms around the world see: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/01/key-document-34-mostly-on-land-closed.html.

Here is another link to my site: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2011/10/closed-system-studies-post-being.html.

You need to get on the right side of this issue and eliminate fish farms from BC water. There are about 100 Million wild salmon in BC in a good year - this is not Atlantic Canada where there may be perhaps 2 Million wild Atlantics. Famed salmon have never been placed in waters with Pacific salmon before. I would guess that from California all the way around to Korea, the total is 1 Billion. You are placing all of these wild salmon at risk from fish farm diseases – 10 species of salmonids.

You should close the industry. Your own science person Kristi Miller showed in Cohen evidentiary hearings that Clayoquot Sound farmed chinook had 25% rates of both ISA and HSMI. That is more than 100,000 diseased farmed salmon per farm. There are only 501 wild chinook left in Clayoquot Sound – this is your own number – and the Kennedy Lake sockeye run collapsed more than 20 years ago.

You need to get fish farms out of the water. This small licencing fee of $1 Mil revenue is very small potatoes compared with what we in BC lose to your intransigence, and that Cohen told you to stop doing. By the way, where is your response to the Cohen Report more than one year later, when he said you should not be supporting farmed salmon anymore and should concentrate solely on wild salmon?

DC Reid