B.C. town wants $10 million fish pens

Chamber of commerce members from a Vancouver Island town are urging the B.C. government to create a homegrown solution to fish containment on provincial salmon farms.

The Tofino-Long Beach Chamber of Commerce voted to take the position Tuesday after presentations on closed-containment salmon farms by the Living Oceans Society and Friends of Clayoquot Sound.

The council is asking the B.C. government to create a $10 million fund to encourage the province's salmon farmers to develop closed-containment technology.

"We need to find a made-in-B.C. solution that protects our marine environment and also facilitates the advancement of a sustainable aquaculture industry in our province," said Will Soltau of the Living Oceans Society.

Soltau asked the chamber to write a letter to the provincial government, asking for the creation of a new $10 million fund.

Environmentalists have long called for containment pens to be operated on land because they prevent salmon from escaping into the ocean and affecting wild stocks.

Almost all salmon farms in B.C. use open-net cages that are based in the ocean.

Mark Spoljaric, of the Friends of Clayoquot Sound, told chamber members that several companies around the world are operating or developing closed-containment technology.

They include Akvaplan-Niva in Norway, Black Ridge Aquaculture of West Virginia, Silfurstjarnan Ltd. in Iceland, Aquafarm of Langley, B.C., and Future Sea Technologies Inc. of Nanaimo, B.C.

In July, the Environment Ministry began investigating one of the largest single escapes of Atlantic salmon from a fish farm in B.C. in recent years.

Marine Harvest Canada, one of the country's biggest fish farm operators, said 30,000 fish escaped from its farm in Frederick Arm, between the Broughton Archipelago and Desolation Sound, costing the company almost half a million dollars.

The company said an anchor holding the corner of a net pen slipped into deeper water and allowed the near-harvest ready salmon, each weighing roughly four kilograms, to swim away.

With a report from The Canadian Press