The evidence mounts that we can safely prohibit net pen fin fish aquaculture from being in our waters without killing the industry. It’s time to give some financial support to the industry to get them over the hump, and out of our waters. But this will also take the Department of Ecology and NOAA to get their scientists off the dime and on the same page as the rest of us. They have shown no intention of changing their industry hardened position on this. The courts likely will have to force them, and that challenge may come sooner than later. Here’s the latest from BC, where there is a huge movement to ban net pens,based on emerging science that is very much showing problems with the industry. However the BC government has been, until recently, hiding negative science and banishing scientists who don’t tow the industry line. This is a small glimpse at the work being done there to change that. It doesn’t have to be the industry argument of “jobs or environment” . It can and should be both.
It’s technologically possible to raise salmon in closed containment pens but questions remain whether it’s financially viable for the aquaculture industry, says a parliamentary report released Thursday. The report, by members of the House of Commons’ standing committee on fisheries and oceans, was delivered Thursday and included testimony from all sides of the controversial issue of closed containment aquaculture.
Judith Lavoie reports.
Closed-pen fish farms offer challenges and opportunities: study