New facility aimed at ending fish farm woes
A former salmon farmer will unveil today his model for a new form of fish farm he hopes would end many of the major controversies surrounding the industry in this province.
Richard Buchanan of AgriMarine Industries, who participated in a B.C. government-funded study of alternative fish farming methods in 2000, has worked with marine structural engineers and scientists on a new form of farm that could solve troubling controversies about escapes, pollution and disease.
Environmental groups have long argued that aquaculture operators should raise their fish in closed pens on dry land rather than in open nets in the Pacific Ocean along the B.C. coast.
Buchanan's project doesn't entirely meet that objective. Instead, he's proposing construction of closed pens that would float along the Pacific shoreline.
Seawater would be pumped through, but exhaust water would be treated with ultraviolet light in order to kill diseases and parasites, and waste would be screened out before the water is returned to the ocean.
The floating tank would cost $1.5 million to build, weigh 1,400 tonnes and last 25 years, Buchanan said in an interview on Thursday.
Half the cash for the facility has already been committed through a foundation that has offered to match government contributions, and the federal Western Diversification fund is currently mulling Buchanan's application for funding.
Both the land and sea-lot required for the facility have been leased, at Campbell River, and the project already has approval from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency as well as a provincial referral.
Hoping to capture Ottawa's attention, Buchanan is displaying a 10-foot version of the pen today at the Best Western Hotel and Convention Centre in Richmond -- where the federal Liberal party's B.C. team is putting on a two-day election campaign "college" and policy meeting in preparation for an expected federal election that could start Monday.
B.C. salmon farmers have repeatedly expressed reservations about closed-containment technology, saying it is too costly compared to open pens.
However, Buchanan says engineering studies show that the closed-pen design he developed in concert with Aquanet has comparable cost -- even before environmental benefits are factored in.
"Conventional net cage systems with anchoring and all of that cost about $300,000 per hole," Buchanan said. "The capital cost allowance is about 15 years. Our tanks are about $700,000, twice the cost, however there are no nets and the tanks will last about 25 years."
Buchanan's work has attracted interest from Skeena MLA Robin Austin, a New Democrat who has been selected as chair of a new government committee to examine B.C.'s aquaculture industry.
Austin said Thursday that he will be in attendance when Buchanan raises the curtain on his model.
"This is our first investigative role, where we are actually going out to see something. I think what we'll probably do is bring that [information] back to the committee so that everyone can take a look at it," Austin said.
Klemtu salmon farmer Ian Roberts said he's aware of Buchanan's work and is not opposed to it.
But he said numerous environmental-impact studies on the marine environment at Klemtu have shown there's no proven need to switch to a land-linked system.
Craig Orr, executive director of Watershed Watch, said the conservation community is not endorsing any particular technology but added that "we are supporting the trials of commercial scale closed-containment net pens."
This article is republished from the Vancouver Sun:
New facility aimed at ending fish farm woes
