Evidence of meeting #24 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 imta.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Bryan Hayes Conservative Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Chopin, it was a very nice presentation. I'm going to get to IMTA, but you made a statement earlier that I really need clarified, because it was the first time we've heard it on this committee. I believe it was the first time we heard that closed containment land-based systems still have escapees. Is this opinion, or is there some evidence that closed containment systems still have escapees?
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
You have the example of the Asian carp.
Every time I visit a land-based closed containment system, it actually isn't what we think. If you look at the trough, you will always see little fish there. You need a little male and a little female and it's done.
Another thing that was very interesting last year happened at trout farms in Scotland, I think. They could not understand why some fish were missing, because they knew exactly how many fish they had put in there, and there were some missing. Then, very early in the morning, a nature photographer understood what was going on. These trout were able to jump to one of the pipes. The guy had put grids on the troughs and everything was controlled, but the trout were very smart, and were able to jump to a little pipe and then come out.
In my opinion, you can reduce escapes, but if somebody is going to guarantee you zero escapes, I don't think that's correct.
Conservative
Bryan Hayes Conservative Sault Ste. Marie, ON
Very good.
Can you give me an idea of some of the breakthroughs you've had in your scientific research? I think you've had some government funding that's been used for your research, so I'm curious as to the breakthroughs. That's question one.
For question two, I really need to understand the development of markets. You said that there is a market for the IMTA biomass, and that we need to develop those markets. I'm not sure I understand what exactly the IMTA biomass consists of.
My questions are on research and markets for the biomass.
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
With respect to research, we started to talk about IMTA, but not under that name--we talked about integrated aquaculture--in 1995. IMTA was created in 2004. I would call 1995 to 2000 a period of preaching in the desert. We had to convince people that it could be done, because they wondered if we could grow more than one species at a site. Was that possible? Then in 2000 we started to be funded, first by AquaNet, the Centres of Excellence Network in Aquaculture, then by the ACO Atlantic Innovation Fund. The breakthrough was proving to people that yes, you could grow more than one species at a site, if you did it right.
The second aspect was that there was still a regulation that did not allow IMTA to occur legally in Canada, because in the Canadian shellfish sanitation program there was a 125-metre distance. You were not allowed to grow organisms closer than 125 metres. It was a regulation not designed to be against IMTA, but we inherited it, and it was delaying things. I was always asking where this 125 metres came from. As a matter of fact, you were not allowed to grow anything closer than 125 metres from a wharf or a discharge operation, so it had nothing to do with IMTA. Then I said, again, that 125 is a magic number and that I am sure that it's 152.3 metres. People were saying to stop these things.
Then we spent, with the help of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, eight or nine years accumulating data on the seaweeds we grow in the IMTA system and the mussels we grow in IMTA and whether they were okay for human consumption. We accumulated eight or nine years of data, and then the CFIA said that we could proceed with proper monitoring, because we had shown that these organisms were okay for food. That was, for me, a major breakthrough.
People always ask you in research whether you have any patents. For me, I say that changing the regulations--it took us several years--was one of the most important achievements.
Now, you talk about markets. We grow salmon, and the salmon from IMTA at the present time is sold by Loblaws as WiseSource salmon. That's one example of biomass that is differentiated because of IMTA. The mussels have a much higher meat yield than the typical mussel you get on the market. We get around 56%, compared to 50% to 55%. So there is an increased yield, and we have to differentiate that.
Generally, in the western world people understand fish or shellfish. But with seaweed, people say, “What do you do with seaweed?” You do three things. First, we are using it in three restaurants. It's not a huge volume, but for me, it's for the story, which is that yes, you can do delicious things with seaweed. Second, we work on cosmetics with a European company. Third, which I think is really important, is fishmeal substitution. We are working on putting more seaweed into new feed formulations for salmon. As a matter of fact, it would be a beautiful loop in IMTA production, because again, we would reduce the use of animal protein and fish protein. At the present time, those are the three uses.
We are also thinking of bio-gas and these things.
Conservative
Bryan Hayes Conservative Sault Ste. Marie, ON
You mentioned different variations of IMTA. I was reading through the documentation. Obviously, biological filtration is what this process is about. Are you not looking at also collecting the nutrients that accumulate, even if you don't have this biological filtration, and using those nutrients elsewhere? Is that something that's being looked at as well?
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
No, for us bio-filtration is bio-mitigation. Today a lot of people talk about organic accumulation. For me, there are two things: organic and dissolved nutrients. The seaweeds are a good case of dissolved nutrient bio-mitigation. We use these nutrients because seaweeds need dissolved nitrogen and dissolved phosphorus and many other dissolved compounds. We use these extra nutrients to grow seaweeds. They grow faster when they are close to the salmon cages. So there is both bio-filtration--recovery of the nutrients--and having at the same time all the crops for diversifying aquaculture production. We do the two at the same time, and it's the same with shellfish.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rodney Weston
Thank you very much.
Mr. Donnelly, I believe you're going to share your time with Mr. Cleary.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Chopin, for your interesting presentation.
I think what you're talking about is mainly theoretical. I'm wondering if there are some examples where this is in place, either in Canada or around the world. Are there examples in water, which I'm assuming this is mostly specific to, and are there some land-based examples where this kind of system is in existence?
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
Yes. We are not talking so much in terms of theories: we have gone from experimental to early commercialization. That's where we are now, and we hope, over the next few years, to go to more food-scale commercial. At the present time we have eight sites that are producing IMTA products. So that's not purely experimental; it's getting serious.
The other thing to mention is that I am the editor of a new book on IMTA in the world. I don't have all the chapters yet, but IMTA projects at different stages of development exist in 40 countries at the present time. So it's not just a bit of curiosity; it's serious.
As for land-based IMTA examples, yes, they exist. The most advanced cases are in Israel and in South Africa.
NDP
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
They are in the Bay of Fundy. There is also one IMTA site in B.C., not with salmon, but with sablefish, on the same principle as shellfish and seaweeds.
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
Yes. It's on the west coast of Vancouver Island, in Clayoquot Sound.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
In terms of the placement of these sites, I would assume that there has to be specific criteria outlining both what makes a good site and which places would not make good sites.
Could you comment a bit more, in terms of either the east coast or the west coast, on what makes an appropriate site, and what doesn't?
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
Yes. I would say for the same reasons as for fish, you need some currents. If the water is too stagnant, the particles will not go toward the shellfish and the seaweeds.
Also, the positioning is very important. There is not one design. That's where the work of people such as Fred Page, physical oceanographer at St. Andrews Biological Station, is very important in tracking the movement of the organic nutrients. That information helps to determine different placements of the mussel rafts and the seaweed rafts. So there is not one design; it has to be adapted.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
I would imagine that there are limited places on each coast, west and east, where this would work and where it wouldn't work.
I'm also curious about the scale. Is the kind of scale—the eight sites you refer to—equivalent to, say, an open net salmon operation on the west coast?
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
These are aquaculture sites that were originally salmon sites. The amendment was to allow these salmon sites to grow more than one species, and to allow them to put seaweeds and mussels. They're commercial salmon sites, to which we gradually add more mussel rafts and more seaweed rafts.
But I also think we need to completely change our perspective. We try to manage at the site level too much, with imaginary boundaries that nutrients don't recognize—only humans put buoys in water. Nutrients move differently. As a matter of fact, it would be much better to have management at the bay level area instead of site management, because the nutrients affect more than one site. We have to think about commercial things, but at the level of a bay. This means that the seaweeds can be a little more downstream than the shellfish, and we could have previous salmon sites becoming seaweed sites. We have to think about more than simply restricting our area to the limit between four buoys.
NDP
Fin Donnelly NDP New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC
Thanks. I'll turn it over to my colleague for a final question.
NDP
Ryan Cleary NDP St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL
Thanks, Fin.
I find that your reading material is very interesting, including this statistic. You talk of how “as capture fisheries stagnate in volume, they are falling increasingly short of a growing world demand for seafood. It is anticipated that by 2030, there will be a 50-million metric tonnes to 80-million metric tonnes seafood deficit”. That's very interesting.
Interesting too is that as the demand for fish increases with the world population and as wild fisheries decline, there is more of a demand for farm-grown fish. But then the problem is, what do you feed farm-grown fish? Do you feed them wild fish? What do you feed them?
I was intrigued with what you said about seaweed and how it is used in restaurants, cosmetics, and—what interests me specifically—a fishmeal substitution. Could the day come when seaweed replaces fish protein as the feed source for farmed fish?
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
First, I would say that in Canada we have a very distorted vision of aquaculture. We think it is only fish aquaculture. I always repeat that, worldwide, the largest crop produced in aquaculture—46%—is seaweed, mostly in Asia, which is why we in the western world don't know about that. Forty-six percent of aquaculture is seaweed and 43% is shellfish. We talk a lot about fish, but fish aquaculture is only 8.9%.
In the future, aquaculture will not be only fish production; it has to be fish, shellfish, and seaweed production. People will also have to consider eating shellfish and seaweed. In Asia, it's not complicated; in the western world, it is complicated.
We are working on substituting seaweed in fishmeal. At the present time in New Brunswick, there are several strategies. There is reducing fishmeal by using trimmings discarded from fish ponds. As a matter of fact, it's still good fish protein for the fish, so the use of trimmings reduces little-fish fisheries. Then there is a percentage that can be replaced by land plant proteins. And we are working on replacing or substituting a certain percentage—I don't think 100%, but a certain percentage—with seaweed. So a few percent of seaweed plus a few percent of land plants plus trimmings—all that together—reduces the percentage.
Conservative
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
As IMTA has expanded, and you say it's in the early stages of commercialization, what environmental monitoring has been going along with that so you can quantify any environmental effects that may have been ameliorated because of your IMTA programming?
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
At the beginning we spent a lot of time monitoring the mussels and the seaweed biomass to be sure that it was okay. With CFIA we monitor heavy metal, arsenic, pesticides, PCBs, and all these things. We did that and that's okay.
We can calculate how much nitrogen, phosphorous, and carbon is sequestered in shellfish and how much is sequestered in seaweed, so we have the calculation. Then we can gradually scale up.
But at the present time, I would say there is not enough information on mussel rafts and seaweed rafts to say that we have removed so many tonnes. It's coming, but we have to scale up.
Also, one thing we realize is that we have to be very careful, because it's not linear. As a matter of fact, especially with organic particles, you have organic particles from salmon feed or from salmon digestion that can go to the mussels. The mussels will eat some, will metabolize some, and will release these organic particles in a different form, which can be used by another organism and then ultimately by seaweed. So it's not linear, but a bunch of cascades. To understand all these cascades has become very complicated; I don't yet have the magic numbers.
Conservative
Robert Sopuck Conservative Dauphin—Swan River—Marquette, MB
I can appreciate that.
In terms of the benthic environment, one of our witnesses a while ago talked about the effect of net-pen aquaculture on the benthic environment. It seems that expert opinion is such that depending on how long the net pen has been there, if the net pen is removed the benthic environment underneath the net pen will return to the original condition in three months to two years.
Just zero in for me on the use of IMTA as a way to minimize effects on the benthic environment. Are you able to fix that problem using IMTA?
Scientific Director, Canadian Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture Network, University of New Brunswick
For the benthic, for the organics, there are two things. We started to work with shellfish. That was the suspension organic particles. The shellfish are good with small particles, but when you have bigger particles that settle faster to the bottom, that's where.... That's what we are working on now, looking at the fourth component, which is whether we can develop the aquaculture of sea cucumber, sea urchins, sea worms, because they will directly impact the bottom.
At the present time the legislation is based on sediment accumulation of sulphites, but this doesn't address monitor everything. Especially, we don't measure what is in suspension, or what is also the inorganic. I am not too sure that we should put so much emphasis on the sulphite numbers.
Another aspect is that maybe the fifth component of IMTA should be the bacterial world, because a lot of things are happening through bacterial remineralization, and if you remineralize things, they're available again to the seaweeds, as these are nutrients.