Presser Highlights The Weak Case For Land-Based Salmon Farming in B.C.

Activists want Ottawa to gamble B.C.’s salmon aquaculture future on land-based tanks that remain costly and unproven at scale.

Commentary
By Fabian Dawson

For years, activists in British Columbia have pointed to Atlantic Sapphire’s Florida “Bluehouse” as proof that land-based tanks can seamlessly replace ocean salmon farming on the Pacific coast.

This week that billion-dollar poster child of land-based salmon aquaculture was forced into an investor-led rescue after repeated biological failures, missed targets and cash crunches.

That did not stop a group of activists, masquerading as conservationists, from staging an absurd Ottawa news conference to demand Prime Minister Mark Carney preserve his predecessor’s fantasy that B.C.’s ocean salmon farms can be replaced by land-based tanks by 2029.

Conspicuously absent from the Ottawa pitch by the Pacific Salmon Foundation, Watershed Watch Salmon Society, the David Suzuki Foundation and Living Oceans Society was any mention of Atlantic Sapphire, losing more than US$400 million, wiping out over 99 per cent of shareholder value and avoiding bankruptcy through an emergency loan.

To make matters worse, this group reached for the Namgis First Nation’s Kuterra facility as its B.C. example of land-based success, while stripping out the inconvenient facts for a puzzled media audience.

After absorbing millions in taxpayer dollars since it was established in 2012, Kuterra never reached commercial scale, ran at costs far above ocean farming, and stopped producing Atlantic salmon, B.C.’s top-valued agri-food export.

Missing from the Ottawa news conference was Cody Smith, Kuterra’s general manager, who has warned that a full-stop removal of net-pen salmon farms in B.C. would be disastrous for the wider aquaculture sector because land-based farms rely on the same supply chain that supports ocean farms.

Also missing were any  indigenous leaders willing to stand at the podium and endorse land-based aquaculture as a real replacement for ocean farms that now support about 4,560 full-time jobs, more than 1,000 Indigenous workers, roughly $134 million in annual direct benefits to First Nations, and more than $1.17 billion in economic activity across B.C.

This Ottawa media conference was meant to sell land-based aquaculture as the immediate future of B.C. salmon farming, while positioning the activist industry for more taxpayer money to advance its ideological agenda.

Instead, it highlighted what First Nations leaders, government reviews and economic and scientific analyses have been saying for years: land-based salmon farming has a role in B.C., but it is nowhere close to being a sustainable, scalable and commercially viable replacement for the ocean farms activists want to shut down by 2029.

After billions of dollars in global investment, land-based salmon farming still has not proven it can replace ocean production at scale, states an internal review by the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association (BCSFA).

The ten largest identified land-based salmon projects in the review have absorbed more than US$3.2 billion, yet their projected annual output is still under 49,000 tonnes, less than B.C.’s current farmed salmon production.

The review says cost overruns are common, production targets are routinely missed, and only one small facility worldwide, Danish Salmon at 2,750 tonnes, has shown it can make money on an operating basis over time.

Similarly, the recent  British Columbia Salmon Aquaculture Land-Based Siting and Alternative Technology Assessmentfound that only a handful of land-based salmon farms around the world produce more than 2,500 tonnes a year, and most have yet to show they can meet the full test of environmental sustainability at commercial scale.

This report notes that each land-based facility requires “around 4–5 hectares of flat land,” massive volumes of high-quality freshwater, and substantial electrical infrastructure. 

It also signals that a large-scale shift to land-based salmon farming in B.C. would not only strain the province’s power grid but also undermine the sector’s overall environmental performance by increasing greenhouse gas emissions, which is contrary to the goals of the current Mark Carney-led Federal Government.

Another report estimated that replacing existing marine salmon farms with land-based Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) in B.C. would require between $1.8 billion and $2.2 billion in direct investment. Even with that level of funding, the report projected it would take at least 10 years before a stable, large-scale land-based sector could be operational in the province.

Timed to capitalize on Wild Salmon Day on June 1, this Ottawa news conference exposed the weakness of the activists’ own case

Atlantic Sapphire was too awkward to mention. Kuterra was only useful with the hard facts left out. First Nations were central to the script but absent from the podium. The economics were brushed aside, even though the numbers point to land-based salmon farming being not ready to replace B.C.’s ocean farms by 2029.

That leaves Ottawa with a choice.

It can follow the activist campaign built on selective examples, missing voices and wishful math.

Or it can deal with the reality facing coastal B.C., where salmon farms already grow food under stringent federal oversight, support jobs, generate First Nations revenue and operate through formal Indigenous partnerships.

(Main image courtesy of Atlantic Sapphire)