« Fuel, feed costs crippling U.S. fish farm industry | Home | Australis Aquaculture hooks into Vietnam »
30,000 salmon escape farm pen
A lone commercial seiner combed waters around Frederick Arm north of Campbell River yesterday in a vain effort to catch 30,000 escaped farm-raised Atlantic salmon.
The escape was one of the biggest for Marine Harvest Canada, the largest aquaculture business in the province.
It renewed First Nation, NDP and environmentalist calls for the industry to move to closed containers to raise fish and other marine species not native to Pacific coast waters
Clare Backman, spokesman for Marine Harvest Canada, said only a few hundred fish had been recaptured by late yesterday and he was not hopeful too many more would be found.
But he said the fish were disease- and antibiotic-free, posing no threat to wild salmon. “I can’t deny that a few will feed on herring and compete with wild salmon, but they can’t mate with them.”
Early Tuesday, employees at the 12-pen farm noticed that the corner of one pen was dipping into the water, allowing caged salmon, weeks away from being sent to market, to flee into the Strait of Georgia.
Backman estimated the loss of the salmon, around four kilograms each, at $500,000.
« Fuel, feed costs crippling U.S. fish farm industry | Home | Australis Aquaculture hooks into Vietnam »
Leave a Comment