October 16 2006 - Geoff Senechenko presents to the Aquaculture Committee
On February 20, 2006, the BC Legislative Assembly put forward a Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture to gather information and make recommendations with respect to sustainable aquaculture in British Columbia. This special committee was to consider the economic and environmental impacts of the aquaculture industry in BC.
Over the last 26 years the Wilderness Committee has worked to protect Canada’s biodiversity, including wild salmon. The Wilderness Committee first asked for salmon farming closures to protect wild salmon in 1998 during the provincial NDP government’s moratorium on new salmon farms that was set in 1995, but lifted in 2002 by the provincial Liberal government.
Text of the speech
Good afternoon. I am Geoff Senichenko, Research Director of the Western Canada Wilderness Committee. We are Canada’ largest citizen funded wildlife and wilderness preservation organization with over 30,000 members and an additional 30,000 supporters. Over the last 26 years we have worked to protect Canada’s biodiversity, including pacific wild salmon.
The Wilderness Committee is calling on the provincial government to fulfill their promise to British Columbians to protect our wild pacific salmon, marine environment and public health by shutting down all industrial open-net cage salmon farms immediately and ultimately phasing out salmon farming all together as it is unsustainable.
Our wild salmon are an international treasure, an intrinsic part of the cultural, social and ecological foundation of BC. They are the lifeblood of streams and rivers, coastal and marine ecosystems, First Nations culture, coastal communities and communities all throughout BC.
Wild salmon support wild life, including our famous southern resident killer whales, commercial fisheries, sports fisheries, and the tourism industry. So many regions of the world have lost their wild salmon runs and other wild fish, it is imperative we protect and conserve wild salmon stocks and their habitat. Please don’t let west coast wild salmon become like east coast cod. Losing our wild salmon would be an incalculable loss to the people of BC and to future generations
It is well documented that open net-cage salmon farms hurt our wild salmon and marine life in many ways. Threats include lethal sea lice infestations, parasite and viral and bacterial disease outbreaks, pollution through sewage, drugs, and chemical contamination, and predation and colonization by escaped farmed Atlantic salmon. These threats have been examined by numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies. Also inadequate legislation and regulation of the salmon farming and fisheries industries has added to the threats to wild stocks. I will now talk briefly about a few of these threats.
It is well known worldwide that wild salmon populations have been devastated by sea lice parasite infestations originating from salmon farms. There is strong evidence from many peer-reviewed scientific studies that confirm the link of salmon farms to sea-lice epidemics in migrating wild juvenile salmon. Even just 2 weeks ago yet another ground breaking scientific study with a strong level of evidence was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that confirms that sea lice from salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago killed up to 95% of wild salmon during the springtime migration.
There have been also other parasite and disease outbreaks from overcrowded salmon farms that spread and kill our wild salmon that swim by, such as bacterial kidney disease and infection hematoporetic necrosis.
Open-net cage salmon farming dumps raw sewage directly into the sea and onto the sea floor. The amount of sewage that BC salmon farms spew onto the delicate marine life is the equivalent of a city of 500,000. This untreated waste is laced with antibiotics, pesticides, and other chemicals. These toxins contaminate sea life in and around the farms, cause toxic algae blooms, and deplete the oxygen in the water that then asphyxiates marine life. The use of antibiotics facilitates the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the drugs are passed to other marine life and to humans.
Escaped Atlantic salmon from salmon farms are also a major problem with the current open-net cages. Up to 1.4 million Atlantic salmon have been reported to have escaped since 1987. Atlantic salmon have been reported to be successfully spawning in many BC streams. They tend to be more aggressive and out compete Pacific salmon for food and habitat and are known to eat juvenile wild salmon.
Inadequate legislation, regulation, and enforcement of the salmon farming industry is another major threat to our wild stocks. From the federal auditor general, the standing senate committee on fisheries, to other independent and government panels and bodies, the same message of stronger enforceable legislation and regulation is also needed to help address the negative impacts of salmon farming.
These issues that I’ve discussed are some of the major reasons why open-net cage salmon farming has huge impacts on our wild salmon and marine environment. As a first step, the industry needs to move to close containment, which can be designed to protect wild salmon and marine life. 80% of British Columbians want closed containment, as reported in April 2005 Synovate research poll.
The Wilderness Committee, however, would go on to say that salmon farming, even if using closed containment systems, is unsustainable and needs to be phased out completely.
Salmon are carnivores. Farming them is like trying to farm tigers. It doesn’t make sense. The world’s fish stocks are being depleted to raise farmed salmon. It takes 2-8 kilograms of wild fish to raise one kilogram of farmed salmon. This causes a global net loss of protein. Most of the fish, like anchovies, that are used to make feed come from off the coast of Peru and Chile. So fish that could be otherwise eaten by people in developing countries, and is often the main source of protein for them, instead is being overfished and used to raise a luxury product up here in Canada. It is not an efficient and sustainable use of the world’s wild fish and protein.
Higher levels of toxins, up to 10 times more, have been found in farmed salmon when compared to wild salmon. Contaminants such as PCBs, dioxins, pesticides, and PBDEs, which are used as fire retardants, pose a risk to human health and the marine environment, as already discussed. These toxins increase your risk of cancer, immune system and reproductive disorders. The high toxic levels, caused by bringing concentrated contaminated fish feed and adding more chemicals while farming, results in farmed salmon being one of the most contaminated protein sources in the world. Who would want to eat that! Both these issues, loss of protein and toxins, would be very difficult to solve, even in a closed containment system.
According to 2001 statistics, the most recent ones we could find, the entire BC aquaculture industry, which includes fish and shellfish farmers, feedmakers, fish processors, and of which salmon farming is a subset, employed less than 2,000 people and generated less then $40 million in wages. Marine sport fishing alone employed 4,700 people and generated $72 million in wages, while marine tourism employed 4,300 people and $134 million in wages. Now from the figure in section 8 of the handout, you can see that commercial fisheries and especially sport fisheries, which both depend on healthy wild salmon populations, significantly outweighed the aquaculture industry both in terms of number of jobs and contribution to BC’s GDP. So even from an economic and social perspective, salmon farming doesn’t make sense for our society to invest in, especially since it is unsustainable, damages other important industries, wild salmon stocks, global wild fish stocks and coastal communities. Why are we neglecting our precious healthy wild salmon and trying to grow alien unhealthy contaminated salmon? We should be investing our money and resources into better stewardship and management of our wild salmon fisheries, restoring habitat and into tourism, which all contribute more to our economy, to a healthy environment, human health and lifestyle.
In addition, other types of sustainable fish aquaculture could be explored, instead of unsustainable salmon farming, such as raising herbivorous fish, such as Tilapia and others, on land in a closed contained system, without contaminants, as has been done sustainably in Asia for thousands of years. We could learn a lot from those tried and true systems without damaging our wild stocks, marine life and other important industries and risking people’s health.
Conserving wild salmon, the natural environment and natural resources for all people and for future generations, is an important responsibility of government that it needs to take more seriously. We all want a healthy environment, economy and world for us and our children. The Wilderness Committee urges the provincial government to act now, to take a leading role, to also push the federal government and industry, to listen to First Nations, local communities and all British Columbians, so we can lead the world and move to a sustainable aquaculture industry. We cannot wait any longer, the wild salmon cannot wait any longer, now is the time to act. Close the salmon farms now. Thank you.
