Open Net Fish Farming in The Strait of Juan de Fuca 2017

[Larry Q]

I worked for a division of Campbell Soup for ten years in the DomSea division. We raised Coho salmon and some Kings in the early years.
We had two large fresh water sites in Rochester Washington and three net pen sites in Puget Sound.
My job was to build and maintain the freshwater sites. Our hatcheries were capable of holding around twenty million eggs.
After the second generation of fish we had our own brood stock that we took the eggs from.
Our smolts were transferred from from fresh water to salt water when they reached about 100 grams in size. We photo adjusted the fish by raising them in a light controlled environment so they would smolt when we needed so we could ship fish year round, not just around the summer solstice.
In the 1980's all fish farms used single pass water that we sent through three settling ponds. Now the farms recycle 90 percent or more of their water.
Our net pens were located between Bainbridge Island and Manchester in Puget sound, this is a high current area. I dove many times to rest cables and anchors on these pens. It was cleaner under these pens than under any city dock on the sound.
The feed was made to our speck using crab and cray fish shells to get the "natural" color.
Correctly done there is nothing wrong with fish farming. Over crowding and poor location along with greed are the real culprits.
I left the industry when Campbell soup sold out to a Norwegian company
Global Aqua in 1989. I still know several people in the industry.
Campbell soup was a great company to work for and were VERY environmentally conscious.

 

[hardee]

Hi Larry,

It was good to see you two at the SBS CBGT. Sorry we didn't get to visit more.

Thanks for your insight on the fish farms. Interesting. I keep wondering why the Norwegians aren't doing their fish farming at home. Nothing against the Norwegians, just the fish farm tactics, I guess.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

 

[Riverjohn]

http://www.seattletimes.com/life/food-d ... s-closing/

 

[Larry H]

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

I don't think any of the positives in the article apply to the Norwegian farms in BC Canada, except the reduction in forage fish used as feed. Question is, what are the farms replacing the fish used in feed with? It would be interesting to see the actual ingredients used in fish feed.

 

[Riverjohn]

Interesting article, thanks for posting.

I don't think any of the positives in the article apply to the Norwegian farms in BC Canada, except the reduction in forage fish used as feed. Question is, what are the farms replacing the fish used in feed with? It would be interesting to see the actual ingredients used in fish feed.

If I had the decision it would be a solid NO to using pens anywhere native stocks reside.

 

[Marco Flamingo]

I think some are missing the elephant in the room. Overfishing

Worrying about overfishing may be missing the herd of Argentinosaurs in the room. Overpopulation seems to be the looming problem. Of course, Argentinosaurus is now extinct. There's probably a lesson there somewhere.

Mark

 

[Riverjohn]

I think some are missing the elephant in the room. Overfishing

Worrying about overfishing may be missing the herd of Argentinosaurs in the room. Overpopulation seems to be the looming problem. Of course, Argentinosaurus is now extinct. There's probably a lesson there somewhere.

Mark

Certainly true in many lakes that have Kokanee, overpopulation only stunts growth.

 

[thataway]

Always hard to know the truth--probably even harder now with the internet. I am not directing this comment toward any one article, or way of thinking--because I don't really know the truth.

Many years ago, I was seated next to the Long Beach Ca. Press Telegraam's science editor. He had written some articles which were factually incorrect. I asked him why he wrote what he did. Answer " My job is to sell newspaper, not always to tell the truth."

People have views to peddle. I think in the Salmon fisheries there is some of that on both sides. I do know that salmon is good for you. I know that I really enjoy a good fresh caught fish, better than any I get at the fish market.

As for over population and food--currently there is more of a distribution problem, than a food shortage. Many populations are shrinking--especially in first world countries. There is concern that population will keep up with demands for workers--in some areas.

 

[Pandion]

Always hard to know the truth--probably even harder now with the internet.

Like Bob, I don't profess to know the truth. But that doesn't mean the truth is unknowable. When I read Tamar Haspel's Seattle Times article I was struck by its one-sidedness. There is no one quoted in the article from the anti-fish farming side of the argument—such as Alexandra Morton, for example—only enthusiastic supporters of just how far fish farming has come, by golly.

There are no reader comments at the bottom of the story, and all we have to go on is what Tamar Haspel tells us. So, we need to find out a little more about her and about how impartial her reporting is. The editors at The Times should have done that before printing the article. But they have busy jobs and it's a lot of work getting a paper out every day. The good news is that with the magic of Google we can do some of the editors' work for them.

I want to emphasize, again, that I don't know the truth here. But the lack of balanced reporting in this story made me smell ... something fishy. A very quick search on Tamar Haspel's name found the following two stories (c'mon Times editors, do your homework):

From TruthWiki: Tamar Haspel – Washington Post columnist

And from Natural News: Meet the sleazy Monsanto operatives pretending to be journalists for Discover, Slate, The Washington Post and the New York Times

I would like to hear a more diverse range of opinions weighing in on Ms. Haspel's Times story, and will attempt to share this information with Alexandra Morton and the authors of the two critical articles mentioned above. It's not too late to go to the comments section at the bottom of The Times story and present a different viewpoint.

 

[Pandion]

Lord, here's one Ms. Haspel wrote for The Seattle Times in 2013:

In taste test, farmed salmon beat wild salmon, hands down

Question is, who ran the taste test, and what were they smoking?

 

[Marco Flamingo]

Years ago, a friend came to dinner with his new girlfriend. We had silver salmon that I had caught that day. When they left after a long dinner and conversation, I noticed that she had hardly touched her salmon. He later told me that she thought it was too "fishy." They later broke up (which was my wife's immediate recommendation after seeing that she hadn't finished her salmon).

I lived in Duluth for a year and caught "salmon" out of Lake Superior. Other fisherman couldn't believe it when I would release them. I just didn't like eating something that looked like a salmon but didn't taste like salmon. Others apparently prefer that.

I accidentally came across a YouTube video of a salmon farm last year when looking at launches in British Columbia. The farm had experienced what appeared to be a complete die off. Some diver's took video of the bubbling gooey mess on the bottom before being run off. It wasn't clear that they were trespassing, but the operator convinced the government that divers could be injured during the cleanup and were therefor allowed to rely on law enforcement to get the divers out of the water. They also tried to get law enforcement to prohibit people filming from shore, but that didn't work.

Those farms always look kind of peaceful on the surface. The video was an eye opener.

Mark

 

[Pandion]

On further reading, both Seattle Times articles cited in this thread were written in 2013. I don't know how much things have progressed, or regressed, since then. Probably still not too late to add reader comments to the articles, though.

 

[thataway]

During our first trip up the Inland passage, (and we had just sailed up from Long Beach CA, 1993), one of the first things we heard on the radio shortly after checking into Canada was basically a "May Day". One of the fish pens had broken open. They were trying to find the nearest purse seiners to try and capture the fish. Good luck on that; as I recollect there were about 150,000 fish which got out.

 

[forrest]

There used to be massive schools of bait out in front of Westport that the Columbia River salmon stopped and fed on, on their way home. Three or four years ago the sardine seines were allowed to fish out of Westport. They basically devastated all the bait schools for miles around. They were only suppose to take 15% of the biomass according to the feds but you can't mark a school of bait anywhere nearby. The feds have shut them down now. I heard that they just ground up whatever they caught for fish pellets to feed farmed fish. That had a dramatic impact on the salmon fishing out of Westport. Salmon fishing has been awful in area 2 for the last couple of years. No baitfish equals no salmon or at the very least, undersized salmon that don't have enough reserves to make it up river to spawn. I don't understand the short-sightedness of our actions. You only have to look at Chesapeake Bay and the over fishing of menhaden to see the future here if we allow seines to suck up all baitfish just to feed net pen fish.

 

[Larry H]

What Forest said ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

This is the problem of fish farming brought right to our front door.

 

[rogerbum]

My bottom line is that friends don't let friends eat farmed salmon. They taste like crap relative to troll caught Pacific salmon and they bring with them a host of environmental problems.

 

[Riverjohn]

What Forest said ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

This is the problem of fish farming brought right to our front door.

Add Gill-Nets in the Columbia River. The very last "River" allowing salmon gill-nets. :amgry

The new Oregon Governor just backed out of the agreement to remove them all this year. All while Washington is holding their end of the deal.

Mad, mad mad!!!

 

[forrest]

Add Gill-Nets in the Columbia River. The very last "River" allowing salmon gill-nets.

Nope. The Willapa has non-tribal commercial gill netting. The Chehalis has Quinault tribal commercial gill netting. Not sure but I think the Chehalis also has non-tribal commercial gill netting too.

 

[DrewbirdII]

Our Herring, Krill, Sardines and bait fish in general are used to make food pellets for fish farms and fertilizers, except maybe the Herring roe? If most, or not all of this this comes from coastal fishing, how could it not effect the wild salmon populations. I remember jigging herring just about any where before going mooching, today you would burn up all your fuel just looking for a herring school.

 

[PaulNBriannaLynn]

I am not an expert on fish farming by any means. As some of you know I work in a field where we try to mitigate the negative environmental effects of farming, and help farmers stay in business in the face of increasing regs. When I started my career in Western Washington, I got to spend some time on a freshwater salmon farm in the South Puget Sound. I wont name names because they are still in business. It was really interesting to learn about the industry, and what struck me most was the scale of the operation. Its a factory.

The thing that struck me most was the tailwater coming off the last settlement basin. Its crystal clear water is released back into a creek. We took samples of that water and had it tested as we would liquid manure. This water was very hot with nitrogen, not just traces but numbers that were incredible. The settlement basins worked wonderfully for removing organic matter but nitrogen is water soluble. We only tested for nutrients, but wouldn't be surprised if it was rich in antibiotics as well. It was shocking that dairy operations and poultry operations have strict regulations for discharging their manure, setbacks from field ditches when applying to fields, etc, and here a salmon farm is pouring nutrients directly into surface water without any regulation.