Two Canadian consultants invited to the Falkland Islands by Unity Marine outlined their experience of salmon farming, fish health and environmental regulation at a public meeting on Monday evening. The meeting is part of the consultation on potential large-scale fish farming.
Speaking on behalf of Unity Marine, Fortuna General Manager Darren Christie said the consultation concerned the principle of salmon farming rather than a specific development application.
The first speaker, veterinary fish pathologist Dr Gary Marty, said much of his work involved diagnosing disease in farmed fish and examining whether pathogens associated with salmon farms affected wild salmon populations. He presented figures for Fraser River sockeye salmon in British Columbia, comparing the number of spawning fish over successive 30-year periods before and during the development of salmon farming.
He said the total number of spawners had increased during the 30 years in which salmon farms operated along the migration route and argued that this did not support claims that farms had caused a population-level decline.
Dr Marty said he had also co-authored a peer-reviewed paper with other fish health specialists which concluded that the available evidence better supported the view that pathogens transmitted from farmed salmon had no more than a minimal impact on wild salmon populations.
He also used satellite images to argue that individual salmon farms occupied a very small area in comparison with the wider British Columbia coastline. He presented information to members of public at the meeting on Pacific herring populations and on the quantities of herring consumed by seals, sea lions, humpback whales and Chinook salmon, which he said provided more evidence that the surrounding ecosystem had continued to support wildlife while farms were operating.
The second speaker, Bernie Taekema of Taekema Consulting Inc, said he had worked for many years as an aquaculture biologist and in the regulation of fish farms for the Canadian federal government.
Mr Taekema described the environmental assessment process used when considering new marine fish farms in British Columbia.
He said an assessment could take at least two years because some surveys could only be conducted at particular times of year. Around 60 environmental, operational and planning factors could be considered before a proposed site was judged suitable, he told those present at the Chamber of Commerce public meeting.
He said the information was largely gathered and paid for by the prospective developer, with government setting the requirements and reviewing the resulting application. Mr Taekema said public knowledge of local habitats, fisheries and other uses of an area was also important.
He said factors considered included water depth, currents, waves, seabed composition, fisheries, juvenile salmon migration routes, marine mammals, seabirds, navigation, existing marine users, tourism and culturally important sites.
Mr Taekema gave examples of farm proposals being altered to avoid a rockfish nursery and to accommodate an existing shrimp fishery. He also described monitoring intended to establish how far organic material from a farm had affected the seabed.
He said that, under the system he described, fish could not be returned to a site until monitoring showed it had recovered sufficiently following a production cycle.
Question and Answer Session
During questions, audience members raised the possible effects of noise from generators, boats and farm activity. Mr Taekema said generators could operate continuously. Asked whether noise could affect marine wildlife, Mr Taekema agreed it could.
Questions were also asked about marine mammal entanglements. The speakers said there had been rare cases involving humpback whales in British Columbia, while seals and sea lions could enter or become entangled around farms. Comparisons were made by the speakers with the Falklands fishery where seals become entangled in nets. They said in British Colombia such incidents were reported and that farms had increasingly installed additional barriers to prevent animals entering pens.
Another audience member questioned whether British Columbia, with its forested and nutrient-rich coastal environment, could usefully be compared with the Falklands with its nutrient poor waters.
Mr Taekema said the effects would depend on factors including the size of the water body, currents, flushing and existing nutrient levels. He said studies and modelling would have to be carried out locally to determine the likely effect.
Asked how much the British Columbia assessment system would need to be changed for the Falklands, he said some considerations would differ, including the presence of penguins, squid and other locally important species. He described the assessment tool as a “living document” which could be adapted, rather than a regulation which could simply be transferred unchanged.
An audience member also referred to pollution associated with salmon farms in the Faroe Islands and questioned whether the Falklands should introduce an activity described there as highly polluting.
Mr Taekema said that, if the reported Faroese experience reflected problems with its regulatory approach, the Falklands should not necessarily follow that model. He maintained that British Columbia’s system had avoided comparable problems and said the Falklands would need to assess its own conditions and decide which regulatory and environmental tools were relevant locally.
The speakers were asked why the Canadian federal government had committed to removing open-net salmon farms from parts of British Columbia if the environmental controls were effective. They attributed the decision largely to political pressure and maintained that the population evidence they had presented did not demonstrate that farms had caused declines in wild salmon.
Dr Marty also addressed the argument that that salmon farming could not be reversed once established. He pointed to Washington State and British Columbia, where farms had been closed, and to Tasmania, where production had been reduced. He argued that these examples showed governments could scale back or end salmon farming if they decided to do so.
An audience member then asked: “At what cost, though?” and referred to reports of a £9 billion claim connected with the closure of salmon farms.
Mr Christie said the figure referred to an estimated loss to the British Columbia economy rather than a compensation claim by salmon farming companies. Mr Taekema said one company had challenged a government decision in an attempt to have farms reopened, rather than suing for financial compensation. He also spoke about the possible effects on government revenue and communities which had become economically dependent on salmon farming.
Both presentations drew mainly on experience in British Columbia. The speakers said Falklands-specific studies would be needed to determine how far the approaches and conclusions they described were applicable locally.
