Vancouver Island community inviting closed containment salmon project
While another project proposed for the use of land-based, closed containment salmon farming technology designed by one Dr. Wright is being developed on the opposite side of Vancouver Island, a local community council is encouraging the same designer to come to the little village of Port Alice (where the author used to live) and to set up shop there, as Ken Manning of the North Island Gazette explains;
Council has invited Dr. Andrew Wright to visit for the purpose of viewing the community as a potential site for land-based closed-containment salmon farms. Council is paying Wright’s costs to travel from Vancouver to attend their meeting Jan. 12. Wright, a philanthropist and electrical engineer who uses profits from the sale of his computer chip designing business to support environmentally sustainable alternatives projects, drew up plans for a 1,000-tonne a year modular closed-containment salmon farming system that are freely available to interested builders.
Wright first turned his energies to planning the system when controversy began to swirl around open ocean farms. At the time that he was working with and contributing to conservation efforts in B.C.’s Great Bear Rainforest. A system similar to Wright’s operated by Aquaseed Corp. in Washington State has proven financially successful. Its “Super Green” rating from Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood WATCH program is popular with food and restaurant chains being pressured by consumers to provide controversy-free salmon. The only other salmon product with a Super Green rating is Alaska wild salmon. Aquaseed say they believe that closed containment addresses issues that dog the open ocean salmon farming industry.
Proponents of open ocean salmon farming argue that closed containment systems require vast energy inputs counters environmental claims.
It should be noted that the land use planning process that resulted in the creation of the “Great Bear Rainforest” ended up with a multi-million dollar economic development fund as compensation for the huge areas of parks and protected areas set aside from most industrial activity, but this fund specifically excludes any money going to net-pen fish farming. And the financial success of land-based production of farmed salmon by Aquaseed Corp. in Washington State can likely be attributed to the overhead of this company being paid for by its sale of Coho salmon eggs to countries like Chile, a business that Aquaseed has been in for many years.
