Chronicle Herald
June 14, 2013

A land-based fish farm in West Advocate is hoping to double its output with a $5.5-million expansion.

Canaqua Seafoods grows halibut, Arctic char and salmon smolt in seawater that comes from wells near the ocean. Founded in 2006, the Cumberland County company now produces about 95 tonnes annually of mostly halibut and some char.

“We entrain the water from the Bay of Fundy through, probably, 700 or 800 feet of gravel and sand,” Paul Merlin, who owns the company, said Friday.

“It comes into our wells and then we pump it into our tanks from there. That way we get a geothermal effect, so we never have super chill. And we also have a bio-secure water supply with no parasites or disease.”

He’s hoping the investment starts paying for itself within 21/2 years.

Canaqua employs 10 people now and Merlin said he’d like to increase that to 23 over the next decade.

“My market is down in the northeastern United States and Upper Canada, mainly,” he said.

“I do some local business, but not a lot. I haven’t really pushed it because it means a lot of door-to-door stuff. Whereas if I ship to a fairly large distributor, they take care of it.”

Merlin is a minority owner of Scotian Halibut, in Clark’s Harbour, which provides Canaqua with juvenile halibut.

“I get them around 10 grams and grow them up to eight to 10 pounds,” he said.

Canaqua’s parent, Merlin Fish Farms Ltd., has put $2.9 million into the expansion.

The province is lending Canaqua $1 million to help with the project. The 10-year loan comes with a 6.5 per cent interest rate, Merlin said. The company also got a $1.2-million grant from the federal government to build the new 32,000-square-foot building that contains eight tanks for growing fish.

The construction was completed last year and the first fish went in two months ago.

Read the full article in the Chronicle Herald.

Fish Update
June 14, 2013

A former airbase at Machrihanish on the west coast of Scotland could be the site for a massive onshore salmon fish farm - creating up to 120 jobs.

The development is being proposed by the firm behind a similar farm planned at Runahaorine Point, near Tayinloan, in Argyll, which has met strong opposition.

Andrew Robertson, director of Dunkeld-based FishFrom, said salmon production at Tayinloan could be under way within two years.

A planning application was lodged with Argyll and Bute Council in February for a 225-metre long, eight metre wide and 12-metre high building at Tayinloan, at the 16-acre site of a former fish farm.

That £18 million project would create up to 20 jobs and be the largest of its kind in the world.

However, it would be dwarfed by the Machrihanish proposal.

Mr Robertson said the 'close containment, recirculation aquaculture system' involved meant there would be no waste streams or effluent.

Fish would be reared from smolts in large tanks, through which water would be pumped and recycled, with no threat of sea-lice, seals, escapes and pollution. Accumulated waste would be used as fertiliser.

Read the full article in Fish Update.

Fishnews.eu
June 13, 2013

Information obtained from SEPA by the Salmon & Trout Association Scotland (S&TAS) shows that nearly one in five fish farms using Slice as a sea lice treatment show chemical residues in excess of Environmental Quality Standards.  

Data from 146 farms which used Slice (emamectin benzoate) between January 2011 and September 2012 were obtained by the S&TAS.

At 28 of those farms (19.1%), Environmental Quality Standards were breached . The results are broadly in line with an earlier study by the S&TAS, which was based on data obtained under freedom of information data covering 2005-2010.

At the time, the Minister responsible, Stewart Stevenson MSP, stated that "should an EQS for sea louse chemicals be breached following the use and discharge of the substances to treat sea lice at fish farms, SEPA would take various steps to rectify the situation - for example, through a variation of licence conditions limiting the further release of these substances until residue levels reduced to below those identified safe levels."

Matters do not, however, appear to be improving and, to date, the S&TAS is unaware of SEPA varying the conditions of any fish farm licence to reduce chemical residues in line with Stevenson's assurance.

Mark Hume
June 12, 2013
Globe and Mail 

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has tested more than 4,000 samples from wild salmon on the West Coast without getting any positive results for three fish diseases that have raised alarms in British Columbia.

In a statement Tuesday, the CFIA said all the samples collected in B.C., as part of a major new disease-surveillance project, have tested negative for infectious salmon anemia (ISA).

The 4,175 wild salmon samples were also negative for infectious hematopoietic necrosis (IHN) and infectious pancreatic necrosis (IPN).

ISA has been on the radar in B.C. since independent researcher Alexandra Morton and Simon Fraser University reported in 2011 that they had found evidence of the virus in wild Pacific salmon for the first time.

Read the full story in the Globe and Mail. 

Read related stories: 

• The Fish Site; June 13, 2013; "Wild Salmon in British Columbia Test Negative for ISA"
• Vancouver Sun; June 12, 2013: "B.C. wild salmon test negative for three fish diseases"
• Courier-Islander; June 12, 2013; "BC salmon samples test clean"
• Wall Street Journal; June 11, 2013; "Surveillance samples of wild salmon in British Columbia test negative" 

FIS
June 12, 2013

Following a debate regarding the health dangers of eating farmed salmon due to its high level of toxins, it has been revealed that Norwegian authorities have lobbied in the European Union (EU) to allow farmed salmon to contain higher toxin levels. This comes as Norwegian doctors and international experts are recommending that women, children and adolescents should avoid eating farmed salmon because of their high toxin content.

According to a report of the newspaper Aftenposten, Norway has been trying for years to get the EU to allow the content of a toxin, endosulfan, to be 10 times higher in farmed salmon than previously allowed. Norway has finally received this approval in the EU.

The consultation document from the FSA states that Norway will benefit economically from having a higher limit of endosulfan allowed in its farmed salmon.

"The limit value for the concentration of endosulfan in feed for salmonids is of great economic importance for the aquaculture industry in the short and longer term," the letter reads, The Nordic Page reports.

Although endosulfan used to be banned for use in feed for all farmed salmonids, research has shown that the fish can withstand the poison better if administered through feed than by being exposed to it in the water.

Read the full article in FIS.