Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members, for your invitation to speak to the standing committee regarding closed containment salmon aquaculture. I applaud you for looking into ways to make the Canadian salmon farming industry more sustainable and successful.
My name is Terry Drost and I am speaking to you on behalf of Gray Aqua Farms Ltd., of Northampton, New Brunswick. I am a native of New Brunswick, and I began working in the salmon aquaculture industry after graduation from the University of Guelph in 1987. I have a bachelor's degree in animal science, specializing in livestock production, and until March 1987 I knew very little about salmon farming. However, I grew up in the Saint John River Valley, never more than a few hundred yards from the river. And to this day, I still look out on the river from my house.
Atlantic salmon, the Saint John River strain, in my estimation is the king of fish. The Saint John River is one of the greatest salmon rivers of North America. However, during my lifetime I have watched enormous changes in the salmon population in the Saint John River. Several hydroelectric dams have been built during the last century. The commercial salmon fishery on the Saint John River was closed. Sport fishing was slowly reduced to no fishing, and today there is no longer even a native food fishery on the Saint John River.
DFO, however, in partnership with NB Power, have invested significantly in salmon enhancement, and fortunately have maintained a modest population of the Saint John River strain of Atlantic salmon.
The first feed that I manufactured in 1987 was for a DFO contract for the Mactaquac Fish Culture Station. Preserving the Saint John River strain of Atlantic salmon has been a preoccupation of both the enhancement community and the aquaculture industry during my entire 25-year career.
In those early days of the salmon farming industry in New Brunswick, DFO was the first source of our smolts. The industry worked together with the Atlantic Salmon Federation to protect and preserve the wild stocks, and also to supply genetically compatible stocks to the entire salmon farming industry in New Brunswick. I believe that salmon farming and wild salmon can not only coexist, but can benefit each other significantly.
The salmon enhancement efforts of DFO have helped develop closed containment technology that is in use around the world for salmon restoration and also for salmon farming. We have learned, and we continue to learn, more about the fish: how to feed them and also how to maintain the most natural conditions for husbandry.
Gray Aqua Farms Ltd. operates one of the largest, most technologically advanced closed containment salmon hatcheries in the world, right on the banks of the Saint John River. With 10,000 cubic metres of tank volume and 12,000 gallons per minute of water flow, Gray Aqua Farms can produce over five million smolts annually. This is approximately 500 tonnes of salmon production.
These smolts will be transferred to salt water and will be grown in natural water conditions in cages in the ocean for the next 12 to 18 months of their life cycle. They will produce 10-pound salmon and have a total production of over 20,000 metric tonnes of market-size salmon. This is a forty-fold increase in biomass.
Could the entire production be done in closed containment? Yes, but at a great cost environmentally, economically, and socially.
Gray Aqua Farms' operation in Northampton, New Brunswick, is on 10 acres of land, with several buildings holding various sizes of tanks and 28 large outside tanks. It is a flow-through operation with water treatment on both incoming and outgoing water. Annual power costs for their hatchery are $350,000. Oxygen and other treatment costs are $250,000 per year. Maintenance for the system is over $400,000.
The total operating cost of this hatchery, excluding feed and labour, is over $1 million.
Members of the committee, if we were to take those five million smolts to grow out in a closed containment environment over another year and a half, a quick extrapolation shows a requirement for over 400 acres of land, 480,000 gallons of water, either flow-through or through recirculation technology, and at least $40 million in operating costs, not including feed and labour.
Finally, imagine the cost for the Canadian industry as a whole, with a production of over 120,000 metric tonnes, and ask yourselves where we could find the land with the ability to provide the water and the power and manage the waste to support closed containment systems of this magnitude, and then ask yourselves, how can any Canadian company survive economically with these additional costs?
Certainly it would be impossible to compete with producers from other countries. I believe the government should be asking itself, how can we support our current Canadian industry to make it more sustainable, allow it to grow and be more competitive in the marketplace, and at the same time how can we support those coastal communities that depend on the salmon industry for their economic viability?
Canada, with one of the longest coastlines in the world and a long history of seafood production, is in an ideal position to be a global power in aquaculture production.
I will leave you with one thought by the first ocean conservationist-environmentalist. I believe Jacques Cousteau was ahead of his time when he said, “We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting.”
Thank you.