Fisheries committee  Absolutely.

Fisheries committee  Yes, that's a great question. With any industry there is always going to be some impact. The question is what level of impact is acceptable to society. How we come to a decision on what is and what isn't acceptable is a challenge. I've worked in conjunction with a number of d

Fisheries committee  I think for sure that will play a big role in public perception. People are interested in buying a product that satisfies their philosophy. So whatever the certification is, and as long as it's an objective certification by a body not directly linked to the industry that's produc

Fisheries committee  Great. It was my pleasure. Thank you.

Fisheries committee  Absolutely.

Fisheries committee  Yes, that is a great question and a complicated one. The whole issue of sea lice is an interesting one, in that you are dealing with an extremely complex system.

Fisheries committee  Okay. One of the things that we were really interested in with regard to sea lice is this. A lot of the studies on the impact of sea lice are correlative studies, and we wanted to know what the specific effect of sea lice was on these juvenile, out-migrating pink salmon, which

Fisheries committee  When you say “social”, do you mean in terms of the public or in terms of the fish in those systems?

Fisheries committee  Right, yes. It's a very interesting question and I think it depends on the species you're working with. For example, species of Arctic char actually grow best at really high densities of up to 200 kilograms per cubic metre, which is absolutely incredible. That's 200 kilograms p

Fisheries committee  Yes, probably the world expert on that is Bob Devlin at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in West Vancouver. He has been very interested in growth hormone transgenic fish. By introducing a growth hormone into an animal, you can greatly accelerate the rate of development. But

Fisheries committee  That's a great question. Most fish feeds now have some vegetable proteins and vegetable lipids in them, so it's common practice, to some degree. One of the concerns is whether you are changing the nutrient composition of the animal and how does it taste? What the industry genera

Fisheries committee  To be honest, I don't know. We haven't eaten the fish. The fatty acid profiles were different. They weren't as different on canola as we expected them to be, so it appears that they do have some ability to compensate for that non-native diet, but we never did eat them, so we actu

Fisheries committee  That's a great question. As a university, we're interested in all sides of the equation. Our focus has mostly been in British Columbia, because that's where we're based, and we interact with basically all aspects. So we include industries that are predominately open net pen, whi

Fisheries committee  That's a great question and, obviously, people are very interested in the answer. From the people I've talked to who are doing research on density effects on fish performance, it seems the biggest determiner of density effects is actually indirect, through water quality. So it se

Fisheries committee  Sure, and that's a great question. Part of what we've been thinking a lot about is that with increased populations, we need more protein, and fish is a valuable source of protein. If we want to provide that protein source through fish, then you have the wild fisheries or you hav