Fisheries committee  I'm sorry, is that for him?

Fisheries committee  Again, this is where science and technology are going to help move us along. With respect to sea lice, for instance, there is very good evidence to suggest that sea lice infestation happens in the top two or three metres of water. Sea lice have a very well-known life cycle. Again and again the science is suggesting that submerging the fish during that time can have a potential mitigating impact.

Fisheries committee  One of the interesting things about our technology is we're in discussion with somebody right now about that. I'm not revealing any names, but various community fisheries groups can now take advantage of this technology to raise fish potentially for restocking purposes as well as potentially for actual fish farming in further iCages.

Fisheries committee  If I remember correctly, the open net-pen systems were about $2,500 per tonne, and the closed containment systems were somewhere between $9,000 and $10,000. Can anybody correct me on that? I think it was three to four times more expensive from open net-pen to closed containment, if I remember correctly.

Fisheries committee  I'm sorry. I've got a presentation, but it's unilingual, so I can't show it. So that's my fault. But it looks like a beer keg with an axle running through it, and it's got the mooring system that allows it to go up and down and rotate. And that's what it looks like from the water.

Fisheries committee  Anyway, we see that there are issues related to flow, how you moor them, site them, and submerge them and such.

Fisheries committee  Yes. You can operate them on the surface as well, just like a regular cage.

Fisheries committee  In there you'll see pictures of ice hitting them, and icing up in storms, but they're really not designed to ride out a storm. The technology is such that when a storm comes along you submerge the cage, because that sort of surface air-water interface is an extremely violent place.

Fisheries committee  This is related to issues around flow through the site, as well as sensor technology. The size of the waste stream is directly related to food conversion ratios, so the more you can do to reduce food conversion ratios, the lesser amount of waste you will have. One of the things we found in some initial trials with St.

Fisheries committee  We're now working on a program on the east coast to turn lobster fishermen into fish farmers. We see a lot of very interesting potential there. We've also had initial discussions with first nations groups on Vancouver Island for potential projects there. And as I said, we see wonderful opportunities throughout Ontario and the rest of freshwater Canada to be able to site the small-scale farms and operate them according to the science that's coming out of the Freshwater Institute and keep the overall ecological activity that results from the fish farm.

Fisheries committee  Thank you very much. I'm Andrew Storey, president and CEO of Open Ocean Systems from Saint John, New Brunswick. We have been asked to make this submission to your committee in order to share how our activities might impact the future direction of aquaculture development and debate in Canada in ways that were not contemplated by the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat when the original assessment of traditional open-net pen and closed containment systems was performed.