Evidence of meeting #14 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was systems.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
Mr. Walker has indicated that there's some concern about these operations leaving and going to larger or more highly populated areas. Do you have a concern about that?
I'd like you to elaborate on that, Mr. Walker.
5:10 p.m.
Director of Canadian Operations, AgriMarine Industries Inc.
My feeling, and this is more of a personal feeling than a corporate one, is that it makes more sense--dollars and cents--to reduce your costs. If you're going to go to the expense of building a land-based freshwater system, you're already putting in high capital costs, so you will likely want to reduce things such as transportation costs for feed going in and fish going out. It just makes more sense to build closer to your market centres.
In British Columbia, we do sell or consume quite a bit of seafood, but we're certainly not the major market for the salmon grown in this province. I do have a fear that we'll see the emigration of business if we go to land.
5:10 p.m.
Bloc
Raynald Blais Bloc Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Good afternoon, gentlemen.
I would like to come back to the points I raised earlier with regard to seawater pens as compared to land-based tanks, and the size of these enclosures. I'd like to hear your thoughts on these enclosures.
Do you prefer the famous water-based pens, in salt water preferably, I suppose? I see that the majority of your fish farms are run in seawater and so I expect that that is your preference. I would like you to explain why.
My other point concerns the size of the facilities. I would say that if they are small, there are fewer dangers than if the operation is enormous or much larger. I would like to know what you think of that.
5:15 p.m.
Managing Director, Marine Harvest Canada
Atlantic salmon have a freshwater stage and a salt water stage. Up to a hundred grams they grow naturally in freshwater; after that they have to move out to sea and they usually, in nature, grow in the ocean. It's true that you can grow Atlantic salmon in freshwater, but that's not without problems. The first phase, of course, is easy, because that is what is natural; the second phase, from 100 grams to five kilograms, involves some problems. If you think about land-based systems, one of the issues would be the waste. If you have salt water waste or salt waste, you cannot use that waste as fertilizer in agriculture; you cannot use it for anything, because it's salt, and the salt will destroy all crops. If you go land-based, you have no remedy, then, to go freshwater, and it also applies to a floating salt-water system. You will always have the question of where to go with your salty fertilizer.
As to the size, our typical farms nowadays are 2,500 tonnes of production in two years. It takes two years to grow salmon. I think the largest closed-containment system in the world, which is not salmon, is probably something like 300 or 400 tonnes today. There is a large-scale difference, and for Atlantic salmon or other types of salmon, the largest closed-containment system is probably not larger than 100 tonnes at this point in time. Does that answer your questions?
5:15 p.m.
Bloc
Raynald Blais Bloc Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC
Mr. Walker, could you answer the same questions?
5:15 p.m.
Director of Canadian Operations, AgriMarine Industries Inc.
I just wanted to address this salt-water waste issue. We did recognize early on that the waste would be a problem, and through DFO's AIMAP program we have been doing some research and development on desalinating the waste. I agree that it is a problem, but I don't agree that it's a long-term problem.
In terms of the size of systems, yes, there are not many.... We talked earlier about how few comparables there are. Our projected system at Middle Bay will have four tanks in the water that will grow about 600 metric tonnes of salmon each year, so it's a commercial pilot scale. If we wanted to compare it to the system at Cedar, which was a land-based flow-through system using much more energy, etc., we grew probably about 100 tonnes a year there. They're really different capacities.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
I'd like to thank our panellists for being here and offering their input. I would like to thank both operators as well for taking me on a tour of their facilities. At Marine Harvest it was the Cyrus Rocks facility that I viewed. At AgriMarine it was the pilot facility at Middle Bay.
I have a few questions for Marine Harvest, and a question for AgriMarine as well. I'll read all three for Marine Harvest and then you can respond. I only have five minutes, so keep that in mind.
First, I'm wondering why it hasn't been possible to expand your business. I understand you commented that you haven't been able to grow for seven years.
Second, the issue of sea lice seems to be a source of controversy. I'm wondering if you can comment on that and why you use Slice, for instance. Is it legal in Canada?
Third, why do you think there's such an outcry from the public on the west coast about open-net fish farming?
5:15 p.m.
Managing Director, Marine Harvest Canada
I can take the question on expansion, and you can take the other two.
There simply haven't been any new licences issued over the last years. The last two licences were given to us in 2006, I believe. We have many more licences than we actually use. We have 70 licences and we only use 41. We only use those licences where the conditions to grow fish are the best, and that always coincides with the best environmental conditions.
We do not want to use the old sites again, with the exception of a few, so we have not received any new licences, apart from the last two from four years ago, and they have replaced all the licences we had before. That is why we have not grown our business. It's as simple as that.
5:20 p.m.
Director, Sustainability, Marine Harvest Canada
On the question of controlling sea lice and the use of a product called Slice, there are two ways that sea lice are controlled: either by harvesting the fish right out of the farms, or by applying a therapeutant milled into the feed. It goes by the trade name Slice. A very small amount is used to control the sea lice. It kills the sea lice on the fish. It's very effective and has a fairly long residual effect in keeping sea lice off the fish.
We use an extremely small amount of it. I think with the 43 million kilograms of farmed salmon we produced last year, we used 11 kilograms of emamectin benzoate, so very little is used.
It is an approved product for use in Canada. It is a legal product and we are currently using, as I said, very little of it. We're looking toward the opportunity to work with government agencies to expand our ability to use other products and not have to rely entirely on Slice going forward. That's a future research and development process.
You also asked about the controversy about salmon farming on the west coast and why it is so strong. It comes down to the fact that we have a really important and valuable resource in wild salmon on the west coast. Everybody, including myself, who lives out there wants to see the wild salmon maintained. Anything that has the appearance of threatening wild salmon comes under a lot of scrutiny.
Our business is placed in the common waters. We are called upon to operate with the highest degree of environmental caution. We're working through a process of demonstrating to the public and our regulators--soon to be the federal government--that we can operate to a high level of environmental conservation.
It's going to take some time to get those messages out. There are probably some things we need to change along the way as well. We're not saying we're perfect, but we're saying we're getting better every day and we're on the road to improvement for environmental sustainability.
5:20 p.m.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you.
I have a quick question for Mr. Walker.
Many have commented that closed containment is not economically feasible, yet you seem determined to operate in closed-containment facilities. I'm just wondering if you can briefly say why.
5:20 p.m.
Director of Canadian Operations, AgriMarine Industries Inc.
Most of the comments are probably looking at land-based closed systems. We've done a lot of modelling, and we feel that our capital costs are going to be lower on a price-per-kilo-produced basis than for a land-based system. It starts making sense right off the bat.
From an operating perspective, we're at least as competitive as the current net-cage operators. Having said that, it's all modelling based on some limited experience to date. Talk to me in two years and I'll give you a much better answer.
May 10th, 2010 / 5:20 p.m.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Wetaskiwin, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the discussion. I wanted to ask some questions. I think what I'll do is simply lay them on the table, so you might want to have a pen handy in case I go too fast.
I'm concerned because first of all, I don't see how an on-land facility that pipes in salt water and returns the used salt water back out to the sea would mitigate or change many of the issues that we currently face, unless we talked about massive filtration systems and the application of pharmaceuticals to keep the interaction.... I mean, when you bring in the water, you're bringing everything with it, so I don't know where that's going.
I think we're talking about three different things here.... There are only two different things. There is a completely closed and contained system, and there's a system that interacts with the ocean. If any of you can share any experiences with me on that, I'd like to know if any study has been done or if any information is available on the quality of the product. When you're talking about something that's grown in the ocean, and when you're talking about wild, and when you're talking about farmed in an open-cage pen versus when you're talking about farmed in a closed-containment system, I would guess there would be significant quality issues to deal with there.
Mr. Backman, I think you mentioned in your testimony that Pacific salmon are more resistant to the Pacific sea lice than the Atlantic salmon are. I'm wondering if that applies evenly across the five Pacific salmon species, or if there are variations within the five Pacific salmon species. Perhaps you can elaborate on that. I would like to know about your brood stock program. What do you do to maintain a healthy genetic diversity? You're saying that you're not importing any genetics right now. If you could tell me how you maintain a healthy genetic diversity for your stocks on the west coast, that would be great.
I heard testimony from a witness last week. I asked basically if a young juvenile salmon, a pink, could leave the Fraser River and swim north between the mainland and the islands and not go through an area of effect. He gave me a number; he said that the footprint of a salmon farm is about 30 kilometers in diameter. I don't know if that's necessarily true, but he said that if that were the case, no salmon could swim without going through an area of effect.
Could you tell us what your information is insofar as the area of effect of a salmon farm? Perhaps you could enlighten the committee on what measures you have taken to mitigate any interactions with seals, aquatic mammals, and so on to address some of the concerns that we hear about dolphin and whale interactions, and talk about some of the issues pertaining to that and to the release of the Atlantic salmon into the wild.
Thank you.
5:25 p.m.
Managing Director, Marine Harvest Canada
I'll take the questions on closed containment, and I could also take brood stock, if you take the rest.
We at Marine Harvest believe that if you want to go to closed containment, you have to go land, and you have to go with recirculating aquaculture. That means that most of the water in your system recirculates time and time again. You'll only exchange something like 3% to 5% of new water in your whole system every day.
Why do you have to recirculate? These installations are extremely expensive. In order to sort of counteract the cost, you'll have to do two things. First, you have to grow at a much higher temperature--probably at the maximum temperature for salmon, which is 13 to 14 degrees--in order to get much more growth. Your fish will grow twice as fast at higher temperatures than they do today. That will reduce your cost.
At the same time, you have to increase density from the current 5 to 10 kilograms per cubic meter to at least 40 to 50 kilograms per cubic meter to be able to get a return on your investment. I believe the two studies that have been quoted before actually have these types of numbers in there.
Again on closed containment, we are concerned about the quality of product when growing in fresh water. Typically in recirculating systems, you get what is called an off-flavour problem. Some flavour builds up in the fish. You can get rid of it, but during the last four to six weeks you would have to flush your fish with sea water or other fresh water in order to get rid of that off-flavour. It's an issue. I personally believe there might be a solution, but there is a cost to everything.
As to brood stock, it's a different issue. We have three different lines of brood stock. We have a program to make sure there is no inbreeding, that we do not cross brothers and sisters and we do not cross families. We know that there is still more than enough genetic variability in our stocks to avoid inbreeding and we think we can go with that for many years.
5:25 p.m.
Director, Sustainability, Marine Harvest Canada
The question was also on the degree of sea lice resistance in the five species of Pacific salmon. I haven't been directly involved in that, but I have read and kept up with the studies there. The initial studies were done on very small salmon. The pink and chum salmon that travel to the ocean are very small in size, and because it was felt they were the most at risk from sea lice, the majority of the data are on the ability of pink and chum salmon to shed the sea lice and on the threshold beyond which they begin to be more resistant. That's mostly known for the pink and the chum.
More information is needed for the larger species. When I say larger, they're migrating as smolts at a larger size. These are the sockeye, chinook, and coho. I believe there is work starting or being done, as we speak, on those questions.
On the question about the footprint of the salmon farm and how far the effect would go, at this point it's a matter of conjecture. We know there are channels, both north and south, around Vancouver Island that don't have salmon farms. If fish are migrating through Discovery Passage or southward around the bottom end of Vancouver Island, they're not going to encounter a salmon farm. However, studies have been done on fish travelling around the southern end of the island by DFO scientists, who have noted that there are sea lice on those fish travelling to the south, so we have to recognize that there is an ambient level of sea lice.
In the BC Pacific Salmon Forum report, one of the recommendations was to ensure that our operations don't increase sea lice beyond the ambient level, so that's how we try to manage our farm operations. In that case, during that out-migration season when the fish are moving through those channels, they won't be challenged any more greatly by sea lice from wild sources than might occur from our farm sites.
Finally, about the other matters--interactions with cetaceans and with seals, pinnipeds--those are key areas where we operate. We try to keep the interactions to a bare minimum. We have to report any interactions like that. We don't see negative interactions with cetaceans. We are concerned that persistent seals and sea lions can create a situation in which we might have an escape of fish if they were successful in tearing nets, so although we manage our farms to avoid them, we sometimes have to destroy seals and sea lions. We report those, of course, to the federal government every year.
I think that covers most of what was....
5:30 p.m.
Managing Director, Marine Harvest Canada
The other question was on the routes for wild salmon. If you were specifically--
5:30 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Thank you.
Thank you very much, gentlemen.
Gentlemen, on behalf of the committee I'd like to thank you once again for taking time out of your schedules to appear before us today and answer the questions the committee members have presented to you.
On behalf of all committee members, thank you very much.
Committee members, before we break I want to briefly discuss something. We had committee business scheduled for today. The item to discuss was the potential travel to the east coast. I appeared before the Liaison Committee on Thursday and made a presentation. The Liaison Committee recommendation was that we reduce the number of members travelling to eight from the present 12. We have not received any approvals from the House at this point and we are awaiting that permission.
Go ahead, Mr. Byrne.
5:30 p.m.
Liberal
Gerry Byrne Liberal Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, NL
First, Mr. Chair, I think you can excuse our witnesses.