It's very timely. There was a report that's not published yet that was released from DFO. Actually, all the aquaculture in Newfoundland, first, is done along the south coast because that's probably ice free. Anywhere else in Newfoundland you'd have to be crazy to try to do any aquaculture with the ice loading that we get in the spring.
There were 18 rivers on the south coast that were studied, and 17 out of those 18 rivers showed evidence—and this is with DNA—of wild fish that were after spawning with aquaculture fish. That's 17 out of 18 rivers that were studied, and 30% of the stock in those rivers were of mixed breeding.
The hardest part about this is that the numbers in all these rivers have gradually been dropping and dropping over the years. What we're getting with this interbreeding is fish that are inferior to the wild species, and they probably don't have the ability to go to the ocean and find a way around. Really what we're doing is weakening that gene pool, and it's showing up already in that the numbers along the south coast of Newfoundland are way down. It's bordering on being threatened there now, so that's direct. The sea lice issue is another one.
What I should say is that we're not opposed to aquaculture, and a lot of the general public think we are against aquaculture. Well, no, we're not against aquaculture; it's the open pens that we have an issue with. The waste food goes to the bottom. You have all kinds of waste going to the bottom, and you have sea lice being passed along. It's very difficult if you have a 1,500-pound bluefin tuna that's swimming by your net looking for lunch. This powerful fish can do some very big damage to your net, and then all of a sudden you have these large escapes.
