Evidence of meeting #12 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 41st Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, Sustainability, Marine Harvest Canada
I want to be sure I understand your question. You were asking why, in that early examination, the floating salt water facilities weren't as popular or viable as the RAS facilities.
November 1st, 2011 / 4:20 p.m.
Director, Sustainability, Marine Harvest Canada
In our opinion it comes down to the fact that they don't control the internal environment of those floating facilities. There is still a lot of exchange of water, untreated for any of the concerns in the ocean, such as phytoplankton or low oxygen; it's still coming into the facility. Even though there is some ability to moderate this, it is still something they have to deal with, whereas in the recirculating aquaculture systems you pay the technology price, the capital price, but you have full control over the water your fish are growing in.
Liberal
Lawrence MacAulay Liberal Cardigan, PE
You have the full control of the environment within those tanks, whereas in the floating ones you do not and, therefore, growth suffers. Is that what I'm understanding you to say?
Conservative
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our guests for coming here.
Clare, you mentioned one of the challenges with closed containment aquaculture is finding a good location. The group we had here last week before the committee mentioned two other challenges, challenges that have also been raised here today. One is capital investment and the other is energy costs, because the energy that's being used to regulate the temperature of the water, for example, is incredible. It's enormous.
That got me thinking about my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador and, more specifically, southern Labrador. Southern Labrador, which has an aboriginal population, is obviously rural and has had its economic challenges since the collapse of the wild fishery. Southern Labrador will have cheap electricity within the next decade from Muskrat Falls, and it obviously is in close proximity to all kinds of water. So my question is whether southern Labrador would be a good fit for closed containment systems in addressing the issue of energy costs. We have the workforce there. But what's your opinion of southern Labrador and closed containment being a good fit?
Director, Sustainability, Marine Harvest Canada
The quick response would yes and no.
What I mean to say by that is where you have low energy costs and you do a business case analysis, you will find it's more viable than where the energy costs are higher. Our case analysis demonstrated that for British Columbia, energy is a big concern. It's offset to some degree by the gains that you would get by controlling the environment and better feed conversion, and those sorts of thing,s but it still is a very high cost and you still have to get a premium price. So where you have a reduced cost for your electricity, it could be more viable.
The no part of my answer was premised on whether or not it would create enough growth across Canada, or in Newfoundland, to satisfy the growth needs of the industry? As things sit right now, I don't think it will so alone.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
I just assumed that this technology would improve and we would get to the point where closed containment would work. I don't know if I'm right in that assumption or not.
But I have a second question. I'm told there is no such thing as a stupid question, so I hope this is not a stupid question. In terms of the cost of feed for fish in closed containment versus open net systems, is it the same or is the cost higher for fish in closed containment than in open net systems?
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
It's higher because you don't have fish circulating through open net is that why?
Director, Sustainability, Marine Harvest Canada
No. You're specifying a food that has higher energy because you want the fish to grow as rapidly as possible, and you're specifying a food pellet that will not dissipate into dust when it leaves the fish as a fecal pellet. You want the fecal pellet to be somewhat cohesive so that it can be filtered out, because you're filtering all of that water.
So those kinds of things, which you're asking of the feed producer, do raise the price.
Executive Director, Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance
If I could just answer your original question, I think another issue is the land base. When the British Columbia industry looked at the concept, the scenario, of taking the current industry and moving it on land, the current footprint of the industry would have had to be increased 40 times. Doing that on land, doing that close to power, and being potentially close to market requires a huge footprint that we don't currently have.
In New Brunswick they were looking at what it would take to replace the production there if they were to move everything on land. You're looking at 18,000 football fields, I think, is what they came up with. That's not insignificant; it's not a minor issue.
The other factor is fresh water. We now have a hugely growing population, and as I think was on the news last night, one of the major issues is lack of fresh water. Closed containment has huge needs for fresh water, which we don't have with current net-pen technology.
I think there are other factors here. The bottom line is this: if Canada wants to have a role in food security and in strengthening jobs in rural communities, closed containment may be a small niche but isn't going to provide what you're looking for in your province.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for your attendance. We appreciate the information you're giving us.
I just want to get back to a comment you made at the beginning, Clare, about the water needs. Ruth, you referred to those as well.
I think you said that you looked at 16 sites and found very few—a couple maybe, or two or three—with adequate water. I just wonder if you can give us some idea of what sort of volumes you're looking at.
As Dan has said, the technology is there to grow fish in closed containment. Obviously that happens throughout the industry, at least to the smolt stage. If you could do this anywhere, say in an urban area, where the water is either chlorinated or fluoridated, would that be a problem? Do you need groundwater or aquifer water?
Director, Sustainability, Marine Harvest Canada
I'd be happy to add a bit more detail there.
When we did the analysis for a site for this pilot project on the east coast of Vancouver Island and were looking from the Oyster River area, just south of Campbell River, all the way to Port Hardy, why did only 2 out of 16 identified areas make the grade?
There are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, I'll piggyback on what Dan said a moment ago about there being no standardization. In talking to the suppliers of the technology, there was quite a variety of water requirements quoted by different groups, ranging from 600 gallons a minute to 1,000 gallons a minute and greater than that. Some required 5,000 gallons a minute. We were also looking at a pilot that could incorporate marine water as well as freshwater. We had to look for locations where there was a likelihood of our being able to access both freshwater and marine water, and in those same kinds of volumes—maybe as high as 5,000 gallons a minute, depending on the specifications of the group we were looking at.
From the information that was available on the aquifers, there was no salt water available near many of them—although there was freshwater. In some of the freshwater locations, there was known to be heavy metal contamination. It was not so much that your human population would suffer, but it was too much for your fish to live in, day in and day out. So these locations dropped off the list. We came down to two locations that appeared to have adequate freshwater volume and quality without these contaminants. We still don't know about the marine water. We'd have to actually do some drilling and pump testing to find out if salt water is available at the levels required.
Hopefully that answers, to some degree, the survey part of your question.
The second part of your question was whether we could pick up water from an urban source. You touched on the major concern, which is that if it's fluoridated or chlorinated for the benefit of people, we can't use it—not without incurring more expenses to remove those additives. As Dan said, we have the technology to do it anywhere. It just depends on what the costs are based on the challenges you're facing at a particular location. To set up in Vancouver, for example, we'd have to put something on the front end, if they're still treating the water, to remove those additives before we could put it into the fish.
Conservative
Randy Kamp Conservative Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge—Mission, BC
I have another question. Is there a reason for the greater interest—at least from what I've seen so far—in the use of closed containment to grow Pacific salmon as opposed to Atlantic salmon? I always understood that Atlantic salmon grew faster, so I wouldn't think it had to do with that. Is it price? Is it more likely that closed containment, if it moved forward as part of the industry, would not be for Atlantic salmon but for growing Pacific salmon?
Director, Sustainability, Marine Harvest Canada
My understanding right now is that the majority of people who are growing fish in these small facilities are using Pacific salmon. I know that SweetSpring Aquaculture in Puget Sound is growing coho. Swift, I believe, is coho as well.
From my experience, and I've been 25 years in and around this industry, is that you work with what you know. Both of these groups started with these fish some years ago and they've gone through a process of refinement with their brood fish over the years and are continuing to use a species that is adapted to their particular technology, which they trust. They know how it's going to perform.
Sweet Springs is now selling to one of the larger suppliers in Vancouver, and that's brought some exposure to that facility and, I believe, it's bringing some more interest in others who are wanting to experiment and develop the coho as well.
So I think it's more along those lines than not wanting to work with the Atlantic salmon. I know that other groups are still looking at Atlantics to experiment with.
President, Canadian Aquaculture Systems Inc.
I would just add to that from the perspective of it being a niche market, as we noted.
Coho provides a tremendous opportunity for a niche market. SweetSpring Salmon has done a very good job at developing that market. You can produce a coho salmon up to about three kilos within a year in a closed containment system. If you compare that to a rainbow trout in the same system, you're likely to get maybe one and a half to two kilos at best. And, coho salmon will sell for about $4 a pound compared to about $2.25 a pound for a rainbow trout.
As I always say, it's an exercise in mathematics. If you do the math, the coho comes out on top. If you do the math with Atlantic salmon, you need to be very large. The coho works well at a 100 to 200-tonne facility. To break even with salmon, as you've seen from the report, we're talking well over 1,000 tonnes of production just to achieve the economies of scale. With salmon, you're going up against the rest of the world, which is producing 1.3-1.5 million metric tonnes of salmon in low-cost production systems. It's mathematics.
Conservative
