SKIPPER'S BLOG: Salmon Losing Sexiness?

If you went back through the NL provincial government books in recent years to see how the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture has spent its money, you might be surprised to see just how much of it has been spent on the aquaculture sector as opposed to the wild fishery.

I can’t give you the exact breakdown, but I feel I can safely assume based on a glance that more cash has been spent on the aquaculture sector in the past few years than on the wild fishery. I stand to be corrected on this, but I know the numbers are very close at the very least.

And that’s interesting when you consider the aquaculture sector in this province last year was worth $120 million and accounted for about 600 or so jobs (nothing to sneeze at for sure) — while the wild fishery accounted for about $900 million in produced value and about 15,000 to 19,000 jobs.

Now, you might be inclined to ask why aquaculture seems to get more government love than the much more important wild sector. The answer is rather simple. And there’s nothing untoward about it. From a political standpoint it actually makes sense.

It’s clear that the aquaculture sector is growing, having taken big jumps in value, volume and job creation in recent years, while the wild fishery has seen stagnant numbers in harvesting and reductions on the processing side. So there’s that to consider.

Secondly, the aquaculture industry is pushed as being sexy and new and technologically advanced and the way of the future and all that. The wild fishery is dismissed as old news, out of date, EI-driven, and yesterday’s industry full of people on the verge of retirement or ruin.
So while the general public will applaud political cash going into the sexy cutting edge industry on the rise, they will scorn you for supporting an industry they feel is headed in the other direction (even if that idea is false on a great many levels).

You have to wonder though if the bloom is starting to come off the aquaculture rose, just a little.

It is clear aquaculture will be a big part of how we harvest and consume fish in the years to come so it’s not an industry that’s going away. But people are starting to wonder if we may need to change how we’re doing things.

There are groups dedicated to taking on aquaculture project and companies because of concerns about the environmental implications some of these operations can have on the waters where they exist.

There have been cases of companies being charged with illegally using chemicals to treat things like sea lice trhat have led to lobster deaths (Read about that HERE).

There have been major fish euthanizations due to outbreaks of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) in Nova Scotia and now we’ve had another bout of it here in Newfoundland (read about some of these related cases HERE and HERE and HERE)

Some consumers are starting to get more picky about their fish, are more of eating a lot of farmed product and are starting to look for sustainable, certifiable wild caught product.

It used to be the only challenge the aquaculture industry seemed to have was basic viability in making sure that the product at the end, could be profitable after considerable expenses.

Based on developments in recent years, it looks as though the aquaculture industry will have a great many other challenges in the future in areas like marketing, consumer awareness, quality control, biosecurity, sustainability, environmental friendliness and others.

And that’s fine — because that just happens to be the same set of challenges the wild fishery faces dealing with its consumers.

And when it comes to the fishing industry, we’re all in this together.