October 22, 2019 — Canada’s Liberal Party and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have won national elections that saw them lose their majority, but retain enough support to return to power with a minority government.
The outcome may have significant repercussions for Canada’s fishing and aquaculture sectors, as the Liberal Party platform called for both more marine protected areas and a shift away from net-pen farming to land-based systems.
October 17, 2019 — Fishing for wild salmon in British Columbia is what inspired famed Hollywood television writer and producer David E. Kelley to enter the aquaculture industry six years ago.
At the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California on 16 October, Kelley – who is the producer of TV shows such “Big Little Lies” and “Ally McBeal” – explained how he became founder and chairman of Riverence, a sustainable steelhead trout farming operation in Filer, Idaho, as well as a salmon and trout egg producer in Olympia, Washington.
October 15, 2019 — Native tribes in the US Pacific Northwest and First Nations in Canada have jointly declared a state of emergency due to diminishing salmon stocks in watersheds that cross the US and Canadian border.
According to a press release from the Lummi Nation, indigenous groups from Alaska, Washington and British Columbia made the declaration due to “rapid rate of destructive resource extraction in the waters and lands these nations have called home for thousands of years”.
The groups have committed “to work together to protect, defend, and assert their human rights by protecting clean water and the health and habitat of the wild salmon stocks”.
October 15, 2019 — U.S. and Canadian researchers have developed a tool that incorporates projected changes in ocean climate onto a geographic fishery management area. Now fishermen, resource managers, and policy-makers can use it to plan for the future sustainability of the lobster fishery in Nova Scotia and Canadian waters of the Gulf of Maine.
“Climate change has socio-economic impacts on coastal communities and the seafood market, but integrating that information into planning and decision-making has been a challenge,” said Vincent Saba, a fishery biologist at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center and a co-author of the study. “Ocean warming is leading to an accelerated redistribution of marine species. Knowing how animals will shift distribution, and what to do about shifts across management borders both regional and international, will be critical to planning on how to adapt to those changes.”
American lobster is Canada’s most valuable fishery, contributing 44 percent of the total commercial value of all fisheries in Atlantic Canada in 2016. Lobster landings have been trending upward in recent decades, and many small rural communities in Atlantic Canada rely heavily on lobster for their economic well-being. Changing climate could have a significant impact on the fishery and on those communities.
October 8, 2019 — Canada’s Conservatives have a few plans for their country’s fisheries and net-pen aquaculture industry that they would like to execute if successful in the Oct. 21 election, but none as dramatic as those promised by the incumbent Liberals.
The party led by Andrew Scheer, a challenger for prime minister, on Sunday unveiled the part of its platform that deals with fisheries and aquaculture issues, promising to, among other things, create advisory panels to consult with the federal government on stock-rebuilding efforts and “increase pathogen testing for open pen aquaculture sites”.
“Unfortunately, Justin Trudeau has failed to appreciate the knowledge of those closest to our fisheries,” the Conservatives said in a brief press release announcing their views and opposition to the positions staked out by the Liberal Party and its leader.
October 7, 2019 — The Canadian Pacific Sustainable Fisheries Society (CPSFS) has self-suspended its Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification for the sockeye, pink and chum salmon fisheries in British Columbia, effective Nov. 27, the organization has announced.
Its members represent most processors and exporters of wild salmon.
“Everyone who cares about wild salmon in British Columbia should be worried,” said the CPSFS’s Christina Burridge, who is also executive director of the BC Seafood Alliance, adding in a statement that the decision means “there will now be no independent oversight of how Fisheries and Oceans Canada Pacific Region (DFO) manages these fisheries”.
“Though we are disappointed, saddened and frustrated to be forced out of the program,” she said, “we believe the fishery is sustainable and we are working on a plan to have these difficulties addressed in order to have the fishery evaluated and re-certified by the MSC at a future date.”
October 7, 2019 — AquaBounty is planning to preemptively label its genetically modified salmon in the United States in 2020, a company spokesperson told SeafoodSource soon after Canadian seafood industry executives and NGOs spoke out against the fish.
At the Canadian Seafood Show in Montreal, Quebec, in September, a panel of seafood industry executives and environmental groups said that they do not plan to sell or support AquaBounty’s AquAdvantage salmon in Canada.
October 3, 2019 — Justin Trudeau calls for shift from open net-pen farming to land-based systems in British Columbia
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party has released its full party platform, which calls for a “transition [in British Columbia] from open net pen salmon farming in coastal waters to closed containment systems by 2025.”
October 3, 2019 — American fishermen are expected to get a little more fishing quota under terms of an agreement with Canada.
The countries are home to fisheries for economically important species that cross international boundaries, such as cod and haddock. They reach agreement every year about how to divide catch on eastern Georges Bank, a critical fishing area off New England and Canada.
The New England Fishery Management Council says the U.S is scheduled to get 29% of the 1.4 million pound total allowable catch of cod on eastern Georges Bank in 2020. It’s also slated for 54% of the 66 million pound total allowable catch of haddock in the area.
October 2, 2019 — A promise from Canada’s Liberal Party that if they’re elected they’ll introduce legislation to move net-pen salmon farming in the province of British Columbia to closed-containment systems by 2025 caught many in the salmon farming sector by surprise.
Timothy Kennedy, president and CEO of the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance (CAIA), said that’s because industry representatives had long been engaged with the government and other stakeholders to discuss technological improvements to salmon farming that would have satisfied many concerns.
That process determined that “hybrid” technologies to grow larger smolts on land and reduce the time farmed salmon spend in the ocean as the medium and near-term solutions that were the most feasible, he said.
“There’s a lot of opportunity and a lot of investment going into that,” he said. “This sort of commitment within an artificial time frame is really challenging and very undermining of the process and the intent of those who were involved in the process.”