Fisheries committee  Almost. The latter part is correct. We're actually pumping sea water from depth unfiltered, bringing it into our system. We exchange it with the tank about once an hour and then we collect the solid waste from it. We move the solid waste to land and then the rest of the water go

Fisheries committee  That's correct. We haven't had any experience with sea lice at all. We're actually growing a Pacific salmon species, chinook salmon, that does not typically have an issue with sea lice infestation. We did have experience with Atlantic salmon in the Cedar facility, which was also

Fisheries committee  We modelled at a peak density of about 35 kilos per cubic metre. It's our experience that the fish have done very well. Peter referred to cortisol earlier. We did some comparable stress tests from the facility at Cedar where we were growing them at 42 kilos per cubic metre and c

Fisheries committee  Actually, we were chinook salmon farmers before, when we were in net cages. We had a lot of experience with them. We liked the fish and had lots of experience with it. When we were at the Cedar facility, we grew Atlantics, coho, and chinook, and then opted for chinook salmon, bo

Fisheries committee  Likely, yes. Premiums are ethereal. They don't last. We haven't done any business modelling based on premiums; we've just modelled on current commodity rates.

Fisheries committee  Cost effectively, we've actually looked at diesel generation. So from a cost perspective, it's certainly doable, but you're dealing with a pretty major carbon footprint if you choose to go that way. That's the sort of decision that would be made by an individual farmer. Certainly

Fisheries committee  Sure. We actually were net cage farmers—we grew chinook salmon on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island for quite a few years—and ended up losing our farms because of several significant losses of fish due to uncontrolled plankton blooms in the area. We wanted to stay in the

Fisheries committee  Our licence right now at Middle Bay is for 1,200 tonnes a year; a typical salmon farm would be 2,500 tonnes or 3,000 tonnes a year. The site has some limitations. We could put possibly as many as four more tanks on that one site, so I guess we'll be getting up into the commerci

Fisheries committee  There's just a point I'd like to make. Peter McKenzie is here from Mainstream as well. I just noticed that his name tag is sitting beside Mary Ellen, so I wanted to make sure you know he's present.

Fisheries committee  Thank you very much. It's my honour to address the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. My name is Robert Walker, and I am president of AgriMarine Industries. We're a publicly listed B.C.-based company in the business of developing and commercializing non-polluting salmon

Fisheries committee  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 oper

Fisheries committee  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

Fisheries committee  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 wil

Fisheries committee  That's correct. We've developed a solid-wall marine-based system, which we call a closed system. It is a flow-through. It's not a completely closed-loop system.

Fisheries committee  We don't have a lot of experience with Atlantic salmon. We've been primarily chinook salmon growers. As Mr. Backman mentioned earlier, the chinook salmon, the Pacific salmon, don't typically have issues with sea lice. We've grown in a Future SEA bag at the Middle Bay site for a