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By Hal Bernton
They swim in a floating mesh pen and leap
in skittering displays of aerial acrobatics. More than 50,000
young Atlantic salmon fattening in the cool blue waters of
the Canadian Pacific.
These fish have emerged in the past decade
as the biggest source of salmon for the world's seafood consumers.
In just the past year, global farmed-salmon production increased
18 percent to reach 2.5 billion pounds, far outweighing the
1.65 billion-pound wild-salmon haul.
While a boon to consumers looking for
a deal, the farms have knocked Seattle-based processors from
their perch atop the salmon industry, once driven by freezing
and canning the wild Alaska and Pacific Northwest harvests.
Wild-salmon
processors are struggling, retreating
from some Alaska harvest grounds and closing plants amid an
onslaught of farmed fish that has swamped salmon markets and
collapsed prices during this summer's harvest.
On Aug. 24, Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles declared
an economic disaster in western Alaska salmon fisheries, blaming
part of the problem on competition from farmed salmon.
The Saltspring farm - 12 floating pens
- is owned by Nutreco, a Dutch company that has operations
in five nations and is the biggest player in the increasingly
corporate world of salmon farming.
The companies have turned salmon into
livestock that are inoculated
to ward off disease and fed pigment-fortified pellets to turn
their flesh a pleasing pink.
In British Columbia and in Washington,
where eight Puget Sound farms produce Atlantics each year,
salmon farms have come under scrutiny.
Government officials - under pressure
from conservationists and commercial fishermen - are trying
to gauge the risk escaped Atlantic salmon pose to wild Pacific
salmon.
And in Europe, the farms are trying to
bolster consumer confidence after new research, widely publicized
earlier this year in Britain, found farmed
salmon contained trace amounts of chemical contaminants.
Still, the industry surges onward.
Farmers keep finding ways to produce more
fish with less feed. They have state-of-the art quality control,
delivering fish live to the processing plants year-round.
And they've made huge market gains, turning
fresh salmon into a global commodity that can be flown from
Vancouver, B.C., to San Francisco or from Chile to Midwestern
supermarkets.
"Farmed salmon is offered fresh all
year round, and that's a huge advantage for supermarkets and
restaurants," said Christophe Pelletier, business-development
manager for Nutreco's Canadian subsidiary.
The salmon-farming industry was born in
the 1970s in Norway, which still reigns as the top-producing
nation. But the most dramatic production increases in recent
years have been in Chile, where its rugged Pacific coast now
hosts hundreds of farms.
In British Columbia, the salmon-farming
industry went through explosive growth in the late 1970s and
early 1980s, and then a period of consolidation as small operators
ceded to large corporate farmers. Today, 17 companies operate
and 105 farms produce about 5 percent of the world's salmon
supplies.
Canadian producers say they are interested
in developing more sites, but for the past six years, the
provincial government has imposed a moratorium on most new
farms while regulators sought to assess the environmental
effects.
The moratorium has been backed by many
commercial salmon fishermen, some tribal groups and British
Columbia environmentalists who say the industry has been poorly
regulated.
"The industry treats criticism as
a public-relations challenge rather
than as a reason to make substantive changes in the ways they're
doing business," said Lynn Hunter of Vancouver
Island, a former member of Canada's House of Commons who now
works for the David Suzuki Foundation, one of the province's
most prominent environmental groups.
Improvements
In Farming
Industry officials acknowledge making
mistakes as they launched salmon farming in British Columbia
but say they have improved. For example:
- Salmon farmers, early on, placed floating
net pens too close together and in coastal areas not well-flushed
by currents. Feces
and feed accumulated.
Industry officials say most farms now
are situated in coastal areas with strong currents. At Saltspring,
a mussel farm operates next door without any water-quality
problems, according to the mussel-farm operator.
- In the early years, farms often suffered
serious outbreaks of disease. That led to frequent
use of antibiotics and to concerns about new
strains of drug-resistant bacteria that might pose risks
to the marine environment and human health.
In the past 10 years, effective new vaccines
have prevented many disease outbreaks. That's enabled BC farms
to substantially decrease the use of antibiotics. At Saltspring,
medicated feed is used less than 5 percent of the time, far
less than antibiotic use in the beef and poultry industries,
according to Smith.
- Salmon farms are a natural target
for fish-loving marine mammals, and the Canadian government
has approved use of lethal
force on marine mammals tearing the nets.
At Saltspring, Smith is testing pen designs
that would withstand attacks. But overall, the industry has
been killing an average 500 to 600 marine mammals a year.
Most are seals, but in some recent years more than 100 Steller's
sea lions and an equal amount of California sea lions have
been killed.
- Salmon farmers have been unable to
fully contain the transplanted Atlantics in the net pens,
and the risks the escaped
salmon pose to wild stocks continue to provoke intense debate.
Escapees:
Gauging the Risk
Elsewhere in North America, introduced
fish species have crowded out native species, which in the
Northwest could be the Pacific wild salmon.
In British Columbia, more than 345,000
Atlantic salmon reportedly escaped from farms over nine years
ending in 1999, according to a report by the auditor general
of Canada. In Washington, more than 500,000 Atlantics escaped
from farms over three years that ended in 1998.
Most of these domesticated Atlantics appeared
to fail in the wild, but some survived, migrating
as far north as Alaska. They also made appearances in 77 rivers
and streams in British Columbia, according to the auditor
general's report.
Escaped adults have been found in at least
a dozen Washington streams.
John Volpe, a researcher at the University
of Victoria, says that Atlantics have successfully spawned
in several British Columbia streams and that Atlantic juveniles
- identified in three BC streams - could successfully compete
with wild steelhead trout in the same streams.
"Atlantic salmon spawn ... and produce
viable offspring. Once the genie is out of the bottle, there
is no turning back," Volpe said in testimony to a Canadian
Parliament committee. That committee, in a recently released
report, said the ability of Atlantics to establish themselves
appears much greater than earlier assessments.
But others say escaped Atlantics pose
a low risk to wild stocks.
Washington state biologist Kevin Amos
says that more than a dozen attempts to deliberately introduce
Atlantic salmon into the wild ended in failure. Amos, a fish-health
specialist, says even though some Atlantics can spawn in Pacific
streams, their offspring are unlikely to permanently establish
themselves.
Amos says transfer
of disease and parasites from farmed fish to wild stocks is
possible, but it's more likely the other way around.
Nonetheless, "we don't think that it's a good thing for
Atlantics to be free," Amos said. "And we're stressing
escape prevention."
Turning Feed
to Flesh
At the Saltspring farm, the 12 net pens
will yield more than 3.6 million pounds of Atlantic salmon.
The growth cycle - from hatchery egg to harvest - takes three
to four years.
The great allure of the Atlantic is its
ability to efficiently convert feed into flesh. For every
1.2 to 1.4 kilograms of dry feed, the farms produce about
a kilogram of fish flesh. That's compared with more than 2
kilograms of feed required to produce a kilogram of flesh
on penned Pacific chinook, the focus of the fledgling BC industry
in the 1970s.
Twice a day, the pellets containing soy
meal, corn-gluten meal and canola oil are flung into the water
by an automated arm that whirs at the center of each pen.
The fish are cut off from the feed five days before harvest,
a process known as "starving" that is meant to reduce
oil content and improve flavor.
The pellets also contain fish meal and
oils processed from anchovies or mackerel. The fish products
help fuel the Atlantics' growth but also tie the farmers to
the wild-ocean harvests of bait fish.
While roaming the ocean, the
bait fish sometimes pick up chemical pollutants.
The most serious problems are in the North Atlantic, where
trace amounts of dioxins and other chemicals have shown up
in fish meal.
In a report released earlier this year,
Miriam Jacobs, researcher at the toxicology group of the University
of Surrey in England, detected polychlorinated biphenyls,
or PCBs, in Scottish farmed salmon and in fish that escaped
from farms or were hatched in the wild. The levels sometimes
exceeded the recommended maximum daily dietary intake set
by the British government.
Another test performed by Canadian geneticist
Michael Easton, under contract with the Suzuki foundation,
found that five feed samples and four BC farmed salmon had
higher PCB levels than four wild samples.
Nutreco has acknowledged that the Atlantic
bait fish, which roam seas rife with European industrial pollution,
may have dioxin and PCB
contaminants. Nutreco has shifted to Pacific bait
fish, which have dioxin and PCB concentrations "considerably
lower" than Atlantic bait fish and within standards set
by the World Health Organization, according to a Nutreco corporate
report.
PCBs are also being tracked in the Pacific
Northwest, where National Marine Fisheries Service biologists
have found them in juvenile wild salmon and in those released
from hatcheries. Some of the highest levels were found in
the Duwamish waterway, at concentrations that could harm the
fishes' health.
But by the time they grew to adults, these
fish would have PCB levels well under federal limits for human
consumption, according to John Stein, a federal fisheries
biologist.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials
say the overall level of PCB contamination in US foods has
plummeted dramatically during the past 20 years, and annual
salmon surveys do not indicate a PCB problem.
The FDA plans additional investigations
of PCBs and salmon.
Future of
Fish Farming
Chile is expected to remain in the forefront
of new farmed-fish production. But in the next few years,
the British Columbia provincial government, which was elected
in June on a pro-growth platform, is expected to lift the
moratorium and increase the pace of development.
Farms are experimenting with pen systems
that could reduce
the risks of escape and disease transfer.
Another technological frontier is genetic
engineering. Earlier this year, Aqua Bounty Farms, a company
with offices in United States and Canada, sought permission
from the FDA to produce an Atlantic salmon inserted with a
special gene that could cause a 10-fold increase in growth.
The industry association for British Columbia
salmon farmers has gone on record against any production of
genetically engineered salmon.
Fish farmers
also are branching out into new species.
In recent years, the farms have begun
producing sea bass and tuna. Halibut - a prized flatfish caught
by Pacific Northwest and Alaska fishermen - also is being
farmed in small amounts in Norway.
Nutreco also has been experimenting with
the traditional staple of fish and chips: the humble cod.
Hal Bernton can be reached at 206-464-2581
or hbernton@seattletimes.com.
Seattle Times
September 02, 2001
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