Twelve fish farm applications: are they really leaving BC's open waters by 2025?

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - BC Salmon farming companies applied to put a in new fish farm between the Discovery Islands and Broughton Archipelago and expand their existing facilities at 11 other locations around Vancouver Island.

Two of the expansions, at Dixon Bay and Plover Point in Clayoquot Sound, have been already been granted.

“We had a promise from federal government whereby they said in mandate letters to the minister of fisheries,  they were going to transition the open net salmon farming industry out of BC by 2025,” explained Stan Proboszcz, Science Advisor of the Watershed Watch Salmon Society.

He outlined the 12 proposed expansion:
A new salmon farm called ‘Ga-Guump’ between the Broughton Archipelago and Discovery Islands
4 sites want to increase production
4 sites want to instal more pens
2 sites in the Clio Channel want the “maximum allowable production cap” in their area removed
another site wants to increase their tenure size.

Photo credit: Figure 2. Juvenile Chum Salmon beach seined from East Vargas Island in June 2018. All lice stages of L. salmonis were represented on this fish. The large brown louse is a L. salmonis female with egg strings. A blood meal is visible in another louse near the later line and immature life stages of lice are present on the anal fin and flank near the dorsal fin (pinkish orange shapes)- ‘Juvenile Salmon and Sea Lice Monitoring in Clayoquot Sound 2018, Cedar Coast Field Station