Placentia Bay. (Photo: Carlb)

Grieg's salmon farm proposal stirs concerns and complaints

CANADA
Friday, March 18, 2016, 03:20 (GMT + 9)

The proposed plan made by Grieg NL Seafarms to set up a CAD 251-million massive sea cage salmon farming operation in Placentia Bayhas continue raising controversies.

Those questioning the firm's project, which has been planned to produce seven million smolts annually for a harvest of 33,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon, argue it is a threat to wild Atlantic salmon. For that reason, the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) and the Salmonid Council of Newfoundland and Labrador (SCNL) are calling for a full Environmental Impact Statement on it.

Those opposing the plan mention, among the risks it could pose, genetic interaction when fish escape, the spread of disease and sea lice infestation.

“Salmon populations along the south coast of Newfoundland have been designated as threatened by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) and are now being assessed for listing under the Species at Risk Act (SARA). These populations are not likely to cope very well with the impacts of this project,” points out SCNL President Don Hutchens.

In addition, Don Ivany, ASF’s Director of Programs in Newfoundland and Labrador, warns: “Furthermore, Grieg plans to use a foreign strain of salmon imported from Europe, which will result in significant genetic and biological damage to native wild salmon if these foreign-strain-salmon escape into nearby wild salmon rivers and breed with wild fish.”

Both experts stress that Grieg has not provided sufficient information on the methods they will use to control disease and parasites and explained that outbreaks of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) have occurred at aquaculture sites located along the migratory corridor of wild Atlantic salmon, which led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon in Newfoundland in 2012 and 2013.

The company, which operates salmon farms in Norway, Scotland and British Columbia, ensures it will use triploid salmon to prevent escapees from breeding in the wild.

In this regard, ASF and SCNL maintain that triploid salmon are not 100 per cent sterile and estimate that up to 280,000 fish - or four per cent of the total population - could be fertile with the potential for escape.

All in all, they argue that Grieg should abandon the proposal for sea cages and establish land-based operations instead, which eliminate the risk of farmed fish affecting marine wildlife.

“We believe the future of aquaculture in Newfoundland would be better served if they were to invest in land-based facilities to grow the fish all the way to market size rather than transferring the salmon to outdated and environmentally destructive sea cages,” Hutchens concludes.

Newfoundland‘s Minister of Environment and Conservation is open to receive Public comments on this proposal, for which the province has committed to funding CAD 45 million, until March 26.

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