Sustainable Salmon Farming in British Columbia

Aquaculture now produces about two thirds of all finfish consumed by humans. There is little doubt that aquaculture production will eventually exceed the human consumption of commercially caught wild fish. In British Columbia, the aquaculture production of salmon includes Atlantic salmon, Chinook salmon, Coho salmon, Sockeye salmon and Steelhead with Atlantic salmon accounting for 90% of the total production in 2013. Farmed salmon production in British Columbia in 2013 was 81,500 tonnes compared to 17,000 tonnes of wild caught Pacific salmon . The landed value of this farmed salmon was 475.8 million which compares to a landed value of 469.5 US dollars for all salmon caught in Alaska in 2012.

Open net pen rearing of salmon in British Columbia has been a controversial issue because of the potential impacts on wild salmon. A problem was the reluctance to have an infrastructure in place as the Industry developed that assured British Columbians that the farms and wild salmon were properly monitored. The message continues to be that British Columbians need to be convinced that there are protocols to assure that salmon farming can be carried out without affecting the sustainability of wild and hatchery Pacific salmon.