This is the third part of The Narwhal’s three-part series on the future of sustainable salmon.

Eric Hobson, a Calgary-based businessman with family roots in British Columbia, used to eagerly await Vancouver Island fishing trips with his father and brother. Salmon were plentiful, and he loved to catch coho and spring, grilling them fresh on the barbeque with a spatter of pepper and salt. But then gradually in the 1990s, everything changed. 

“We used to fish for salmon in Cowichan Bay, off Vancouver Island, and then there were no salmon left in Cowichan Bay,” recalls Hobson, whose parents and grandparents were from Victoria. “And then we’d fish from an island on the inside around Parksville. And the fish started to disappear from there, so we moved to the west side. And the fish got less and less plentiful, and smaller and smaller.” 

Once he had money and time, Hobson created the SOS Marine Conservation Foundation to try to figure out why wild salmon populations were in such steep decline. (The foundation later merged with the science-based charity Watershed Watch Salmon Society.)

“People that I fish with had told me that wherever the salmon farms go, the wild salmon perish,” says Hobson, who worked in the energy pipeline business as an electrical engineer, also co-founding an energy market trading company, a telecommunications company and a multi-media company. 

He flew to Gilford Island in the Broughton Archipelago on B.C.’s central coast, the home of biologist and wild salmon advocate Alexandra Morton. It was there Morton offered to take him out in her boat to count sea lice on smolts around the salmon farms tucked into bays in the archipelago, a major migration route for juvenile salmon heading to sea. 

“There were millions of smolts in these bays during the out-migration to the sea, and now we had trouble finding two dozen fish,” Hobson says in a telephone interview. 

A juvenile wild salmon caught near B.C. salmon farms in the Broughton Archipelago. The young salmon is infested with sea lice which feast on the mucus, blood and skin of salmon and can cause death. Photo: David Mozkowitz

Biologist Alexandra Morton inspects a juvenile salmon for sea lice in her home on Gilford Island. Photo: David Moskowitz

Morton, a wild salmon advocate, gazes out the window of her home towards the Broughton Archipelago where numerous salmon farms are located. Photo: David Mozkowitz

“And the two dozen we found were covered with lice and were in various stages of dying. That really drove the problem home to me. When you have an open [net pen] system like that, it’s a breeding ground for parasites and pathogens. You have unprotected juveniles leaving the rivers, and the farms are located right on their migration paths.”

Hobson promptly formed another group — the SOS (Save our Salmon) Solutions Advisory Committee — to seek ways to mitigate any damage that fish farms were having on wild salmon populations.

“It became pretty obvious, pretty quickly, that the only way you could solve the problem once and for all was to put a solid wall up between the wild fish and the farmed fish. And so we started the whole process of developing the land-based closed-containment business in British Columbia.”

Kuterra, the first commercial sized land-based salmon farming facility in North America, was constructed one kilometre from the ocean in Port McNeill on northern Vancouver Island, after the SOS Marine Conservation Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding with the ‘Namgis First Nation. Designed and built by a Nanaimo company — and funded by the ‘Namgis First Nation, the federal and provincial governments and philanthropic individuals and organizations  —  the facility produced its first full-sized salmon for market consumption in April 2014. 

Owned by the ‘Namgis First Nation, Kuterra harvested about 90,000 Atlantic salmon a year, which were sold in Safeway grocery stores and served for dinner in upscale restaurants such as Yew Seafood in Vancouver’s Four Seasons Hotel.

“If you balance swimming speed with the right feeding regime you get this well-exercised fish that is well muscled but still has a fairly high fat content,” Hobson says. “They’ve got a very, very nice mild taste and flaky texture. It’s absolutely delicious.” 

Farmed Atlantic salmon swim in a closed-containment pond at the Kuterra fish farm. Photo: Kuterra

Land-based salmon farming stalled in B.C.

Hobson hoped the technology developed by Kuterra would spawn other land-based salmon farms in B.C. But more than six years later, only one other land-based salmon farming facility, West Creek Aquaculture in Agassiz, is operating, while land-based salmon farming operations pop up around the world in unlikely spots such as subtropical Florida, a Swiss mountain village and the desert near Dubai.

In 2019, the American aquaculture firm Emergent Holdings signed a 15-year lease on Kuterra, which has struggled to find sufficient capital. 

Emergent Holdings said it would leverage Kuterra’s expertise to build one of the world’s largest land-based salmon farms in Bucksport, Maine — where other land-based salmon companies are also busy setting up shop. (Neither Kuterra nor Whole Oceans, the Emergent Holdings-owned company building the salmon farm in Maine, responded to requests for interviews.) 

The story is similar on the east coast of Canada. Sustainable Blue produces land-based salmon in Nova Scotia’s Bay of Fundy and Cape D’Or Sustainable Seafoods, in Nova Scotia’s Advocate Harbour, uses salt water wells to imbue its land-raised fish with a flavour close to wild salmon. 

Prince Edward Island is home to AquaBounty’s land-based Atlantic salmon facility, which is raising its first batch of genetically engineered salmon. The salmon have a growth hormone gene from chinook salmon — spliced into genetic coding from ocean pout, an eel-like fish — that allows them to grow to full size at twice the speed. They will be sold in Canada early in the new year, without labelling. 

An AquaBounty genetically engineered Atlantic farmed salmon photographed in July 2020 on Prince Edward Island. Photo: AquaBounty

Many other locales now have a head start over B.C. when it comes to land-based salmon farming, according to a 2019 report from the Fraser Basin Council, which examined the economics of land-based salmon farming on Vancouver Island, finding it would create almost 4,000 direct and indirect jobs during the construction phase and 2,700 direct and indirect jobs during farming and processing operations.

“B.C. is not used to competing with Florida or Wyoming in the production of salmon,” the report said. “A new competitive reality must be recognized, and a crucial next step in attracting this industry is developing a cohesive plan for making B.C. competitive, and touting the advantage of locating here.”

But there is no cohesive plan for land-based salmon farming in B.C., the world’s fourth-largest producer of Atlantic salmon, as a decades-long dispute about open net pen salmon farms continues to simmer.

Wild salmon advocates, backed by scientific studies, say open net pen farms spread disease and sea lice to wild populations — already stressed by climate change and habitat loss — and point to mass escapes of Atlantic salmon in Pacific waters, where it’s feared they could compromise the genetic integrity of native salmon. They say the precautionary principle should be applied, which recognizes that conservation measures should be taken in the absence of scientific certainty when there is a risk of serious or irreversible harm to the environment using the best information available. 

A salmon farm lights up the waters off the B.C. coast. Farms use artificial light to extend the feeding hours of the salmon. Photo: Tavish Campbell

The BC Salmon Farmers Association, representing some of the world’s largest salmon farming corporations, brandishes competing science reports, including from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, insisting that responsible open net pen salmon farming does no harm. 

It doesn’t help matters, critics say, that Fisheries and Oceans Canada has a mandate to promote salmon farming as an industry and farmed salmon as a product — even though the Cohen Commission into the Decline of Fraser River Sockeye recommended the mandate be removed and the department “act in accordance with its paramount regulatory objective to conserve wild fish.”

And the federal government’s announcement on Dec. 17 that it will phase out 19 fish farms in the Discovery Islands, a key migration route for wild salmon, does not mean salmon farming companies will be switching to land-based production — even though more than 75 land-based salmon farming operations are planned, under construction or in operation around the world, including Atlantic Sapphire’s “Bluehouse” that raises Atlantic salmon on a former tomato field in Florida. By 2031, Atlantic Sapphire plans to raise 220,000 tonnes of salmon — more than double the amount produced each year in B.C. — in the Bluehouse, a name the company has trademarked. 

“The science to produce large numbers of salmon on land just isn’t there yet,” John Paul Fraser, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, said in an emailed response to a request for an interview. “It is being developed, certainly, but no-one has yet successfully raised large numbers of fish on land without significant fish health or other issues.”

The association also throws cold water on land-based salmon farming in a November report that makes the case for open net pen farms, saying they can help lead provincial economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“There is no magical leap forward to having all production in closed containment or in large offshore technology in the near term,” the report says. “Salmon farming is part of the fabric of B.C., Vancouver Island and Indigenous coastal communities, and is committed to further growth through technology development and improvement, but not if the sole objective is to leave the water.”

Salmon smolts in a B.C. open net pen salmon farm. Photo: Tavish Campbell

What does a salmon farming transition mean for B.C.?

The federal government’s position on a transition to land-based salmon farming is somewhat murky. In 2019, the federal Liberal party promised in its election platform to develop “a responsible plan to transition from open net pen salmon farming in coastal waters to closed-containment systems by 2025.”

But when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued mandate letters for his cabinet members several weeks later, he instructed his new fisheries minister, Bernadette Jordan, to work with the B.C. government and Indigenous communities “to create a responsible plan to transition from open net-pen salmon farming in coastal British Columbia waters by 2025.” 

All mention of closed-containment systems had vanished, leaving the phrasing open to interpretation — an omission Stan Proboszcz, science and campaign advisor for the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, called “borderline deceitful.” Suddenly, it seemed the government only planned to make a plan by 2025.

In a telephone interview with The Narwhal, Terry Beech, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Fisheries, Ocean and the Canadian Coast Guard, says the government can’t give an exact date or provide precise plans for taking open net pen salmon farms out of the water. But he says Ottawa is committed to a transition “and the transition is starting now.”

“We’re not waiting until 2025,” says Beech, the MP for Burnaby North-Seymour. “We’re looking at getting it started with a sense of urgency that reflects the concerns we’ve heard from various stakeholders in British Columbia.” 

In January, Beech will lead formal consultations with First Nations and a group of representative stakeholders, including the salmon farming industry and environmental groups. By spring, he will deliver an interim report on transition plans to minister Jordan.

But Beech says a transition does not mean that B.C.’s open net pen salmon farming industry will move en masse to land, even though a 2019 report from Fisheries and Oceans Canada — released in February — concludes land-based salmon farming is ready for commercial development in B.C.

“I’m not going into this committed to a specific technology,” Beech says. “I’m going into this committed to moving the entire industry on the west coast to a more sustainable and predictable future, and I’m open to the technologies that could make that possible.” 

One technology examined in the DFO report is known as the “super smolt” hybrid model. The model combines land and ocean-based systems, transferring salmon into open net pens later in their life cycle, where they grow to market size in nine to 12 months. But while the DFO report concluded the hybrid technology is also ready for commercial development in B.C., wild salmon advocates say it won’t address problems associated with open net pen farms.

A major problem is sea lice, a parasite that feeds on fish, causing stress and damage to their immune systems and making them more vulnerable to disease. Wild juvenile salmon are especially susceptible as they migrate past fish farms, where sea lice are sometimes so problematic that one company has used a barge to pressure wash the salmon.

Healthy scales of a wild salmon. Photo: Tavish Campbell

A salmon infested with sea lice. Photo: Tavish Campbell

The hybrid technology would simply fill existing pens with larger fish, leading to increased waste discharge from the farms, according to Living Oceans Society executive director Karen Wristen. “It’s a scheme that benefits only the salmon farmers, because it allows the fish to achieve a greater size and a greater viability before they put them in the rather uncertain environment of the ocean,” she says.

And Wristen points out that investing in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) to grow super-sized smolts is very different from building RAS facilities, like Atlantic Sapphire’s Bluehouse, to raise salmon from eggs to market size. 

Building super smolt facilities could hinder development of a true land-based salmon farming industry in B.C., she says. “Those smolt farms will be located in places where they can readily serve the open net pens. That’s not necessarily where you would put your money in bricks and mortar if you were looking to develop a land-based industry.”

The DFO report also examined floating containment systems, where salmon live in an enclosed environment in the ocean, and offshore systems, which move salmon farms away from coastal areas and wild salmon migration routes. Floating containment systems need up to five more years to study, while offshore systems require 10 more years, the report concluded.

Wristen says open net pens would still be problematic offshore, and may not withstand the Pacific Ocean’s mighty storms. And it isn’t clear how the salmon farming industry would dispose of waste from floating closed containment systems, except to discharge it into the ocean, she says. 

“I don’t see them being able to pipe the sewage to anywhere it could be treated, economically, so I’m thinking that one’s not coming to our coastline anytime soon. The cost of supplying diesel to a system like that is high, and environmentally destructive.” 

In December, the salmon farming giant Cermaq announced a trial of a semi-closed containment system at its Millar Channel farm site, north of Tofino in Clayoquot Sound. The system uses a patented material to form a barrier around the net pen, eliminating “lateral interaction between wild and farmed salmon” and preventing the spread of sea lice, according to the company.

The technology shows promise in preventing sea lice infestations after it was piloted in Norway. But sea lice, which have become drug resistant, may adapt to go deeper in the water and circumvent the barrier, Wristen observes. “In the short-term it will alleviate the sea lice problem, but not the problem of pathogens and drugs being released into the marine environment.” 

Beech says he is open to considering all technologies.

“I’m certainly not in the position to be closing the doors to any sort of technologies, either currently available, available in the near future, or available in the distant future, that can help us produce healthy, viable finfish aquaculture and food in a sustainable way, that allows us to grow a multibillion-dollar finfish aquaculture industry.” 

In keeping with DFO’s other mandate, Beech also says it’s important to return wild salmon to traditional levels of abundance and restore “what is a very durable and culturally important multibillion-dollar wild salmon industry in British Columbia.” 

Wild sockeye salmon. The year 2020 is set to record the lowest sockeye salmon returns on record. Photo: Tavish Campbell

‘A writ large reconciliation with First Nations’

Bob Chamberlin, a former fisherman and former vice-president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, remembers when the Alert Bay harbour was so full of seine boats and gill netters that the bay seemed like a small city. He says only a handful of boats bob in the sheltered waters today. Each seine boat provided five jobs, and each gill netter supplied two jobs, notes Chamberlin, chair of the First Nations Wild Salmon Alliance and a member of the Kwikwasutinuxw Haxwa’mis First Nation.

“That’s what we could enjoy coast-wide when there were healthy and abundant wild salmon stocks. And there’s no way in the world that the fish farming industry can compete with that level of employment … If we were to work on salmon runs across this province, we would be able to reinvigorate a commercial fishery.”

While some First Nations, such as the Kitasoo/Xai’Xais First Nation on B.C.’s central coast, support open net pen salmon farming and the economic opportunities it brings to their remote communities, Chamberlin says the majority of First Nations in B.C. are opposed. The federal government’s decision to phase out Discovery Islands salmon farms was made after more than 100 B.C. First Nations, along with commercial and sport fishing groups and eco-tourism operators, demanded their removal, saying the farms posed a threat to endangered Fraser River wild salmon stocks. 

Chamberlin’s own nation, along with two other nations in the Broughton Archipelago area, planned a celebration in the Alert Bay Bighouse in mid-March — it was cancelled due to the pandemic — to celebrate the planned closure of 17 open net pen farms in the archipelago over a four-year period, following intense negotiations with the B.C. government and the occupation of a salmon farm.

The Pacific Salmon Foundation has also endorsed a move to closed-containment salmon aquaculture, saying governments must put wild salmon first: “This transition to closed-containment will take time but the removal of open net-pen farms along migratory routes of wild Pacific salmon, particularly for those stocks of greatest concern, should occur as soon as possible,” the association said in a May 2018 position statement on aquaculture in B.C.

That’s in keeping with the 2018 recommendations of an advisory council on finfish aquaculture, which said the precautionary principle should be applied when assessing the threat of open net pens on wild salmon populations.

Chamberlin says unbridled transition to land-based salmon production would provide economic development opportunities for First Nations around the province.

“If we were to invest in wild salmon stocks and rehabilitate runs all over the province, it’s better for the environment,” he says. “It’s better for the economy. It can be put under the umbrella of a writ large reconciliation with First Nations across B.C. … It’s one of those things where everybody can win.” 

The Fraser Basin Council report, co-authored by resource analyst Edwin Blewett, assumed the new industry would add to the current production of Atlantic salmon in open net-pens, and that a Vancouver Island-based industry would produce 50,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon annually from individual farms operating at a 3,000-tonne scale.

A capital cost of $1.1 billion would be required to establish the industry, including $83 million for land, the report found.

But the salmon farming association warns the sole pursuit of land-based production would mean relocating investment and jobs to larger population centres or major markets outside B.C. “Even if it does become feasible, large land-based salmon farms would almost certainly not be built in our remote coastal communities, as they don’t have the land or access to water and power required and are not close to major markets,” Fraser said in the email. 

Chamberlin says all industries must evolve, including the salmon farming industry. 

“We don’t log like we used to,” he says. “We don’t mine like we used to. Certainly, oil and gas is changing as well. And this industry is still locked in the 1980s.”

“It’s time for evolution.”  

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is the second part of The Narwhal’s three-part series on the future of sustainable salmon.

On Prince Edward Island, anchored between Rollo Bay and a sea of potato fields, the first genetically engineered salmon raised in Canada for food are swimming in tanks.  

Grown in a land-based containment system, they look like any other Atlantic salmon: silvery, pale-bellied and speckled on top. But hidden in their DNA is a growth hormone gene from chinook salmon — spliced into genetic coding from ocean pout, an eel-like fish — that allows them to grow to full size at twice the speed.

When the salmon are harvested early in the new year, they will be shipped to seafood distributors, finding their way to restaurants, hotels, hospitals and grocery stores. Yet Canadians munching on salmon tacos or salmon au gratin won’t have a clue they are eating the world’s first genetically modified food animal. Unlike the European Union and the United States, Canada does not require GMO foods to be labelled — and the fast-growing fish are no exception. 

AquaBounty Technologies, the U.S.-based biotechnology company pioneering the genetically engineered salmon, says it is “combining the goodness of nature with the power of science and technology.” 

“We believe savouring your favourite fish and helping save the planet should be one and the same,” the company’s website says. “And that’s why we believe in using science and technology to help solve global problems, like food scarcity and climate change.” 

AquaBounty markets the salmon as disease- and antibiotic-free, saying its product comes with a reduced carbon footprint and no risk of pollution of marine ecosystems compared to traditional sea-cage farming. 

But others have a wildly different view of the AquaBounty salmon, grown with technology called AquAdvantage, a name that would be at home on the pages of a dystopian Margaret Atwood novel. 

“It’s Frankenfish,” says Charlie Sark, a member of the Mi’kmaq First Nations and professor in the school of climate change and adaptation at the University of P.E.I. “It’s science fiction. Just because we’ve created a machine that can splice genes together, does it mean we should do it?” 

Even if the engineered salmon are raised only in land-based containment systems, Sark and others say human error could lead to the genetic contamination of threatened wild salmon stocks, underscoring that the federal government’s behind-closed-doors approval of AquAdvantage fish has far reaching consequences for Indigenous Rights and nature.

“Salmon are sacred,” Sark says in an interview. “You just can’t change the genetics of an animal that Indigenous peoples have used for thousands of years without first consulting them.” 

An AquaBounty genetically engineered Atlantic farmed salmon photographed in July, 2020, at a fish farm facility on Prince Edward Island. Photo: AquaBounty

Genetically modified salmon eggs approved by Harper government

Genetically engineered salmon eggs were approved for land-based production in Canada in 2013, when Stephen Harper’s Conservatives were in power. 

The government only permitted one company, AquaBounty, to produce the eggs — and only at a P.E.I. facility. Today, the Rollo Bay operation is also the sole supplier of genetically engineered Atlantic salmon eggs for the company’s land-based salmon farm in Albany, Indiana, which planned to send salmon to market late this year or early in 2021.

The eggs had their genesis in a laboratory at Newfoundland’s Memorial University, where scientist Garth Fletcher and his colleagues isolated the anti-freeze gene in ocean pout, which can survive year-round in near-freezing waters.

They replaced the coding region in the middle of the anti-freeze gene — unlike in other fish, the gene doesn’t turn off seasonally — with the growth hormone gene from chinook salmon (the scientists used chinook because it was readily available at the time). 

Then the team injected the new coding sequence into Atlantic salmon eggs. “It took a while for us not to kill the eggs,” Fletcher, head of the ocean sciences department, says in an interview. 

After tweaking their technique, Fletcher and his colleagues were excited to discover the genetic trait was passed on through breeding. And then came another exciting finding for the team; the rapidly-growing salmon reached maturity in just under two years, compared to three. 

Scientist Garth Fletcher is head of the ocean sciences department at Memorial University and worked with colleagues to develop the AquAdvantage technology now being used in AquaBounty salmon farms. Photo: David Howells / Memorial University

“It was an enormous change in the rate of growth,” Fletcher says, noting that cross-breeding has further enhanced growth speed. “It’s the same with any crop, if you can replant land or get another set of fish earlier than normal, you have increased productivity.”

By comparison, regular Atlantic salmon grown in optimal conditions in Atlantic Sapphire’s land-based facility in Florida reach maturity in 22 to 24 months.

Fletcher doesn’t consider the genetically modified salmon to be much different than new fruit and vegetable products created through cross-breeding, such as the Cosmic Crisp apple that has a longer shelf life or Depurple, a purple cauliflower sweeter than the typical white variety.

He says food companies are “getting rid of everything that doesn’t meet their standards in terms of a commercial product. You’re actually changing nature … all these kinds of things are unnatural if you want to call it that.” 

“There is a problem with food production in the world. I know some of it is political, but if I have an idea or a technique that might be able to help with food production then I’m all for it, as a scientist.”

The need for protein is growing in tandem with the world’s rising population, expected to top nine billion before 2025. Salmon, which have Omega-3 fatty acids and are a good source of minerals and vitamins, are increasingly in demand. But the on-going decline of wild stocks is constricting supply. And as tighter regulations make open net pen salmon farming more challenging, investors — including AquaBounty — are turning to land-based salmon farming.

AquaBounty farmed salmon grown in containment tanks. The company says the fish are reared without the need for antibiotics and are free from parasites. Photo: AquaBounty

Fletcher’s team, which was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, partnered with a small company that morphed into AquaBounty, largely bankrolled by billionaire biotech entrepreneur Randall Kirk. 

When AquaBounty set up its research and development facility on Prince Edward Island to produce the genetically modified eggs, the federal government did not permit the fish to be grown to adult size, so eggs were shipped to an AquaBounty research and development facility in Panama.

Once Health Canada approved the salmon for consumption in 2016, Ottawa allowed AquAdvantage salmon grown in the Panama facility to be sold to unwitting Canadian consumers.

The first batch of genetically modified Atlantic salmon from the Panama facility arrived at Montreal’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau airport in 2017, according to import documents obtained by the Quebec food watchdog group Vigilance OGM. More than 4.5 tonnes of AquAdvantage salmon subsequently flowed, unlabelled and untraceable, into Canada’s food supply.

Peter Bowyer, AquaBounty farm manager, oversees containment systems where the salmon are grown. Photo: AquaBounty

“There is no mandatory labelling for consumers in the grocery stores and there’s very little transparency, and yet we find ourselves in the position of eating the world’s first genetically engineered animal,” says Lucy Sharratt, coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, which represents 16 groups working on issues related to genetic engineering in food and farming.

Sharratt, who has an extensive background working as a researcher and campaigner for groups involved in genetic engineering and global justice issues, says the lack of transparency extends to Ottawa’s decision-making process for approving the engineered salmon.

Starting in 2019, following a federal risk assessment, Ottawa allowed the salmon to be raised to maturity at the Rollo Bay facility, which also produces conventional salmon eggs, triggering concerns about a potential mix-up.

The biotechnology action network has tried to obtain information about the “behind closed door” approval process, Sharratt says, but information AquaBounty submitted to the government is confidential and the network’s questions haven’t been satisfactorily answered.

“The information that’s used to decide the safety of genetically engineered food is submitted by the companies that want approval,” she says. “Very little of that information is publicly available. Very little is peer-reviewed.” 

The absence of information is all the more concerning, she says, because of the broad — and also unknown — implications of tampering with nature and the precedents it sets. 

“What we have here is potentially a very profound shift in the way we view food and where it comes from. Do fish come from the ocean, do they come from our rivers, do they come from an ecosystem? Or do they come from an on land factory? … What decisions are we making that further threaten the future of wild salmon?” 

Lucy Sharratt, coordinator of the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network, is concerned about the consequences of genetically modified food. Photo: Lucy Sharratt

Nature Canada senior advisor Mark Butler says the federal government has opened a Pandora’s box by approving the development and sale of genetically engineered salmon and eggs without a robust public discussion about the potential consequences.

“You could say, ‘what’s wrong with pink blue jays or blue cardinals?’ We are now applying engineering to the genome to the very blueprint of life. It has big implications and this technology is racing along. I think it gets at the whole issue of what’s wild and what’s nature, and where do humans stop and where does nature start?”

“Do we have the right to edit the genome of a wild species from an Indigenous perspective? This raises some pretty fundamental questions and challenges.”

Salmon are sacred to Indigenous peoples like the Mi’kmaq, and are part and parcel of food security and food sovereignty, Sark points out. They are also an integral part of cultures through ceremony, song, oral history and art. As wild stocks decline, it has a reverberating impact on the physical and spiritual health of Indigenous communities. 

Sark says Indigenous peoples should have been properly consulted and Ottawa should have obtained their free, prior and informed consent before approving genetically engineered salmon.

“As a Mi’kmaq I have a right to food, I have a right to fish lobster, I have an inherent right to access and harvest fish out of the ocean or out of the streams, the brooks, the rivers, the lakes. The Canadian government cannot extinguish that right.”

He wonders what would happen if he caught an Atlantic salmon that somehow contained DNA owned by AquaBounty. 

“I’m holding a salmon that I’ve caught in my traditional waters, that my ancestors have used for thousands of years, but because it’s an escaped salmon or an inbred salmon from this genetically modified [organism], is it illegal for me to hold that fish and eat it without paying AquaBounty?” Sark asks. “Where does this end?” 

Kris Hunter of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, a science and advocacy organization dedicated to conserving and restoring wild Atlantic salmon, says genetically engineered salmon could be an ecological disaster for wild salmon, especially if rules change and they become the fish of choice for the farmed salmon industry.

” … if these animals were to get out … what impact that would have on the wild fishery?”

He points to the escape of hundreds of thousands of Atlantic salmon from fish farms in B.C. and Washington state. In December 2019, more than 20,000 salmon escaped from a Mowi fish farm near Port Hardy on northern Vancouver Island, while more than 160,000 Atlantic salmon escaped from a Cooke Aquaculture fish farm in Washington State in 2018, leading to a state ban on raising Atlantic salmon in open net pens. 

Some escaped Atlantic salmon have been found in the salmon-bearing Fraser River, heightening worries that they will compete for food and habitat given evidence that the farmed fish can naturally reproduce.

“Our concern would be if these animals were to get out and what impact that would have on the wild fishery? The wild fishery is not doing well right now.”

Karen Wristen, executive director of Living Oceans Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting Canada’s oceans, is uneasy about how the fast-growing genetically modified salmon might behave in the wild, possibly mating with endangered salmon populations, preying on wild juvenile salmon and outcompeting wild salmon and other ocean creatures for food. “You can picture it wanting to hoover up everything in its path.” 

And if the salmon farming industry transitions to land-based containment systems, Wristen and Butler say there will be pressure on companies from investors to embrace genetically engineered salmon, to keep costs in line with competitors.

A wild Atlantic salmon in the waters near Quebec. Canada’s wild Atlantic salmon populations have dramatically declined in recent decades. Photo: Shutterstock

‘Systems fail and accidents happen’

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved AquaBounty’s genetically engineered salmon in 2010, on the condition that the salmon be sterile. Sterility is achieved through a process that creates a condition called triploidy — the salmon have three chromosome sets instead of two — that is between 99.5 and 99.8 per cent effective. 

“It’s an important barrier, but not a fool proof barrier,” Butler notes. For every 10,000 salmon the company produces, between 20 and 50 fish will be fertile.

Hunter, director of programs for P.E.I. and Nova Scotia, says the Atlantic Salmon Federation has met with AquaBounty and the company appears to be doing due diligence to make sure the genetically engineered salmon don’t escape. 

“Our concern is an accident. A truck goes off the road carrying these things as it’s crossing a salmon river, and the next thing you know these fish are out and they’re breeding amongst other fish populations and causing untold damage.” 

Genetically engineered salmon eggs could also get mixed up with the regular salmon eggs harvested at the same AquaBounty facility and end up at an open net pen farm, Hunter points out. The company isn’t currently permitted to sell the eggs to open net pen operations in Canada, but Hunter says that could always change.

“Systems fail and accidents happen. Once the genie is out of the bottle you can’t put it back in … We think this is a very risky enterprise. And we don’t necessarily see the benefit.”

In an emailed response to questions from The Narwhal, AquaBounty president and CEO Sylvia Wulf said the company does not plan to supply AquAdvantage salmon eggs to open net pen farms and will produce the genetically modified salmon in its own land-based facilities.

AquaBounty’s land-based farm in Albany, Indiana, plans to send its first salmon to market later this year or early next year, depending on demand, which has been dampened by the COVID-19 pandemic. The company also plans to build a much larger facility in Mayfield, Kentucky, that will produce 10,000 metric tonnes of salmon a year, about eight times more than its Indiana plant.

Wulf says all of the company’s market production salmon are female and sterile, which means they cannot mate with each other or with other Atlantic salmon. In addition to the biological barrier, she says the company’s land-based containment systems are equipped with physical barriers, including screens, grates, netting, pumps and chemical disinfection, to prevent escape of salmon at all life stages, from eggs to full size.

AquaBounty’s P.E.I. fish farm. The facility is located in farmland where potatoes and soybeans grow and is about one kilometre away from the Northumberland strait. The facility’s proximity to streams and ocean water is cause for concern among critics. Photo: Leo Broderick

And AquaBounty will address egg mix-up concerns by ensuring that eggs are from conventional salmon before sending them out to farms, says Wulf, who declined a telephone interview.

Sark calls the secretive federal approval process of AquAdvantage salmon a “coup d’etat,” noting that the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which regulates genetically modified organisms, hasn’t been updated for 20 years and doesn’t have the bandwidth to consider genetically modified salmon.

The act, according to Butler, is a “really complicated and obtuse piece of legislation,” while Wristen says as challenging to decipher as the often maligned income tax act.

“Our act is outdated,” Sark says, “and I would say extremely colonial in its essence that it can’t consider genetic modification of animals that Indigenous people to a large extent still rely on, or use for ceremonial purposes, which is a matter of our sovereignty. Using the animals for sustenance is a matter of food security. The role it plays in ceremony and in culture and identity is a matter of our food sovereignty.”

“This is a first in the world. You’re approving it to go ahead. And your legislation is inadequate.”

In the September Speech from the Throne, the Trudeau government pledged to update the environmental protection act. But Butler says senior officials in Environment Canada have indicated the changes will be minor, much to the dismay of those considering the impacts of genetically engineered salmon.

“This is a first in the world,” Sark says. “You’re approving it to go ahead. And your legislation is inadequate and you’re not considering making it adequate? Wait a second. Isn’t that your job? Isn’t that the role of government … to make sure our health and security is looked after? Isn’t that the ultimate number one goal when you sit there in Parliament… to look after our interests, not the economic interests of one company?”

U.S. groups sued FDA for approving engineered salmon

In 2016, the Centre for Food Safety and the environmental law organization EarthJustice sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for approving genetically engineered salmon, acting on behalf of a broad coalition of environmental, consumer, commercial and recreational fishing organizations and the Quinault Indian Nation.

In early November, a U.S. federal court judge ruled the Food and Drug Administration failed to analyze the risks to endangered salmon from an escape and to take into account the full extent of plans to grow the genetically modified salmon in the U.S. and around the world.

The court also ruled that the Food and Drug Administration’s conclusion that genetically engineered salmon could have no possible effect on endangered wild Atlantic salmon stocks was wrong, and violated the U.S. Endangered Species Act.

While Judge Vincent Chhabria found the current risk to wild salmon stocks is low, he said the possibility of exposure increases with each new facility built.

“Understanding the harm that could result from that exposure — and having an explanation of it on record — will only become more important,” the judge said, ordering the FDA to go back to the drawing board to sketch out a full explanation of potential environmental consequences.

The decision, watched closely by Nature Canada, the Atlantic Salmon Federation and other groups in Canada, was celebrated by Earthjustice and its clients. “Our efforts should be focused on saving the wild salmon populations that we already have — not manufacturing new species that pose yet another threat to their survival,” Earthjustice managing attorney Steve Mashuda said in a media statement.

Earthjustice cited studies showing there is a high risk for genetically engineered organisms to escape into the natural environment, and that genetically engineered salmon can crossbreed with native fish. Genetically engineered crops commonly cross-pollinate or establish themselves in nearby fields or the wild — a process known as transgenic contamination. The contamination episodes have cost American farmers billions of dollars over the past decade, Earthjustice noted.

“In wild organisms like fish, it would be even more damaging.”

Wulf says the company is disappointed with some of the judge’s conclusions but remains confident “in the robust scientific studies and review” that led to the 2015 FDA approval of AquaBounty salmon.

“This case did not call into question FDA’s approval regarding the health and safety of our AquAdvantage salmon,” she wrote in her email. “The focus of this decision was on the potential environmental impacts, and the judge confirmed the ‘low’ threat to the environment of our salmon.”

The decision will not impact operations at the Prince Edward Island or Indiana facilities, according to Wulf, who says the company will work with the FDA on next steps and will “continue to evaluate the legal decision.”  

“The future of our domestic and global food supply will depend on innovation and technology and AquaBounty remains steadfast in our commitment to leading that charge.” 

Butler, who supports land-based salmon farming operations, has a piece of advice for AquaBounty: “Skip the genetically engineered salmon and just raise normal fish using the best techniques and the best genetic strains — and we won’t have a problem with your operation,” he says. 

“Most Canadians, if they had to assess the risks and benefits, would just say, ‘Give me a normal salmon.’ ”

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

This is the first part of The Narwhal’s three-part series on the future of sustainable salmon.

Damien Claire stands inside an industrial complex on the outskirts of Miami, watching thousands of salmon fry dart this way and that in a circular tank. At nine weeks old, the youngsters are the size of paperclips and learning to feed. Instinctively, they school, turning into a swirling dark ball in the lime green light. 

Claire wears a bright safety vest and a white hardhat stamped with the logo of the company he works for, Atlantic Sapphire. It’s a brand that pops up frequently these days in seafood industry publications with names like Salmon Business and Intrafish. 

Founded by two Norwegian cousins with an environmental ethos, Atlantic Sapphire got its start in Hvide Sande, a windswept Danish fishing village on the North Sea, where the company raised small batches of market-ready salmon that never dipped a fin in the ocean or a river. Today, the company is poised to become the largest producer of land-based Atlantic salmon in the world.

Claire, originally from France, is Atlantic Sapphire’s chief sales and marketing officer. He’s clean-shaven, has a movie-star accent and waves his hands around when he speaks. His enthusiasm is palpable, even through Zoom and a wonky internet connection. 

The fry, he explains, were transferred about two weeks earlier from an onsite hatchery, where they spent the first weeks of their lives eating their yolk sacs. In another 18 to 20 months, after moving through five more tanks that mimic the natural stages of their life cycle, from freshwater to saltwater, and something in between, they will be ready for the grill.

“It’s a little bit faster than in net pens because the fish always have ideal conditions,” says Claire, who previously worked for a large distribution company selling Chilean farmed salmon. “There is no winter here, there are no diseases, there are no sea lice. We optimize everything the fish needs.”

More than three million Atlantic salmon, in various stages of development, are swimming and schooling in what Atlantic Sapphire calls a Bluehouse. Think of a greenhouse, only for fish. The Bluehouse, a name trademarked by the company, is an hour’s drive from downtown Miami and 25 kilometres from the turquoise waters of Biscayne Bay near the Florida Keys. From the air, the complex appears as a blaze of white bobbing in a sea of fields. The flotsam and jetsam of small farm buildings and plant nurseries fleck the surrounding landscape. 

Land-raised Atlantic salmon seen swimming in Atlantic Sapphire’s Bluehouse facility, which completed its first commercial harvest in September. Atlantic Sapphire has plans to dramatically increase their harvest, which could have market repercussions felt by B.C. salmon farmers who sell 95 per cent of their fish to the U.S. Photo: Atlantic Sapphire

As global demand for protein grows, and wild fisheries collapse or reach peak harvest, Atlantic Sapphire hopes to help fill the gap with land-based salmon from the Sunshine State. The Bluehouse is close to major U.S. markets, avoiding the carbon footprint of farmed salmon flown in fresh from countries like Canada, Chile and Norway. Raising salmon on land side-steps the controversy that continues to entangle the open net pen salmon industry, which has been marred by mass escapes of Atlantic salmon into the Pacific Ocean — where it’s feared they could displace dwindling native salmon stocks — and accused of spreading disease and parasites to wild salmon. 

Atlantic Sapphire markets its salmon as ocean safe and planet friendly. “All natural,” the company advertises. “No hormones, no antibiotics, no parasites, no pressure.”

First Bluehouse harvest goes to market 

In late September, the Bluehouse completed its first commercial harvest of salmon. The fish were packed whole on ice and dispatched to an initial 120 grocery stores by truck, where they were sold with a “USA raised” stamp and an American flag. It took 48 hours for one truck to drive to Quebec, where the sushi-grade salmon — rated a “best choice” by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch certification program and recommended by Ocean Wise — are sold at IGA stores.

Johan Andreassen, an Atlantic Sapphire co-founder who calls himself a salmon entrepreneur, tweeted a photo of an empty U.S. grocery store tray behind a Bluehouse Salmon label, saying, “When you raise truly sustainable Bluehouse Salmon that is super fresh, mild and delicious in the USA this is what can happen. SOLD OUT!” One commercial customer, Acme Smoked Fish, heralded the harvest as a “seismic shift” for the global seafood industry.  

By January, Atlantic Sapphire, which currently harvests salmon several times a week — selling Bluehouse fish in grocery stores as far away as Texas and California — plans to send fish to market every day. The industrial complex continues to mushroom over a former tomato field as the company adds more capacity. 

Commercial salmon, harvested from the Bluhouse facilities in Florida, have made their way into Canadian markets and have been sold at IGA grocery stores in Quebec. Illustration: Atlantic Sapphire

Ten years from now, Atlantic Sapphire plans to harvest 220,000 tonnes of salmon annually — more than one-half of all farmed salmon consumed in the U.S. in 2018. That’s more than twice B.C.’s yearly farmed salmon production. 

“In the near future,” the Bluehouse salmon website says, “it will be as natural for consumers to prefer salmon from Florida as it is for them to seek lobsters from Maine and potatoes from Idaho.”

For British Columbia, which sells 95 per cent of its farmed salmon to the U.S., the repercussions are enormous. Claire says Atlantic Sapphire doesn’t intend to displace open net pen salmon farming. Rather, the company says it is helping to conserve dwindling populations of wild fish populations by decreasing demand for wild fish, thus protecting threatened habitats. But Atlantic Sapphire offers a shining, even glaring, example of what the B.C. salmon farming industry says it cannot do — raise commercially viable salmon on land instead of in the sea. 

As the Trudeau government promises a transition away from open net pen salmon farming by 2025, the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, representing some of the world’s largest salmon farming companies, is hooking itself to a large part of the status quo: raising Atlantic salmon in the Pacific Ocean. An animated video released by the association in October, as part of a new “Deeper Dive” platform to correct what it calls “misinformation and disinformation,” says the technology does not exist to successfully replace all of B.C.’s open net pen salmon farms with land-based operations. 

“Lots has been said about land-based salmon farming, that it’s the future,” says the video’s deep-voiced narrator. “But the reality is B.C. is considered a world leader in innovation and responsible farming, today.”

Today, virtually all B.C.’s farmed salmon — 99.4 per cent — are raised in open net pens up and down the coast, in sheltered bays where the tide flushes away part of their waste. 

Some, like those in the Discovery Islands, are along migration routes for Pacific salmon, where scientists like Alexandra Morton have raised the alarm about the transfer of sea lice to vulnerable wild juveniles leaving their natal rivers. Sea lice are a parasite that feed on fish, causing stress and damage to their immune systems and making them more vulnerable to disease. 

An open net pen salmon farm off the B.C. coast. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Only a smidgeon of the province’s farmed salmon production — 0.6 per cent — comes from land-based operations. Kuterra, on northern Vancouver Island, owned by the ‘Namgis First Nation, produces Atlantic salmon while West Creek Aquaculture in Agassiz raises coho sold in the Prairie provinces. 

Elsewhere in the world, land-based salmon farming is revving its engines for take-off. Investors are sinking funds into land-based containment systems close to markets, slashing transportation costs by avoiding air travel and offering a lower carbon product that doesn’t require antibiotics, pesticides or elaborate attempts to vanquish harmful sea lice, such as a barge with a “hydrolicer” that pressure washes lice from farmed salmon on Vancouver Island’s west coast. 

At least 75 land-based salmon farms are operating, planned or in construction around the world. In the United Arab Emirates, a short drive from Dubai, salmon are raised in the desert, in a facility that has environmental controls to create tides, sunrise, sunset and automatic currents that mimic a river or ocean. Sea water is cleaned and filtered for the tanks, and the company plans to install solar panels for energy. “It’s the realization of a dream — it fits perfectly within the UAE’s drive for food security,” Nigel Lewis, the technical manager at Fish Farm UAE, a company backed by the Crown Prince of Dubai, told Salmon Business. 

One salmon farm in a Swiss mountain village caters to the luxury food market, advertising “pure alpine salmon,” while Poland’s Jurassic salmon, three kilometres from the shores of the Baltic Sea, uses filtered saline geothermal water to fill its tanks, converting fish faeces into fertilizer for nearby agricultural operations.

Land-based salmon farms are also causing ripples in countries like Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Japan, Chile and South Africa. China has jumped into the land-based salmon business with a splash, planning to produce 130,000 tonnes over the next decade, making it the world’s largest land-based salmon farming country after the U.S., in the top spot, and Norway. At the end of November, the Norwegian company Norsal unveiled plans to build a $400 million land-based salmon farm in Yantai, China, an industrial city in Shandong province along the country’s northeast coast.

Wild, juvenile salmon infested with sea lice, captured near open net pen Atlantic salmon farms. A single sea louse, which will feed on the tissue, mucus and blood, is enough to kill a juvenile salmon. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Salmon farms can amplify sea lice populations, putting wild salmon stocks at risk. Photo: Tavish Campbell

Across the U.S., land-based salmon farms are in the works from coast to coast. In Wisconsin, a state not normally associated with ocean products, Superior Fresh is off to such a promising start with land-based salmon production that it’s boosting capacity. Nordic Aquafarms, a company already raising salmon on land in Norway, is building two massive closed-containment projects “close to large markets,” one north of San Francisco and the other in Belfast, Maine — where other land-based salmon farming companies are also setting up shop. 

As demand for protein climbs in tandem with the world’s growing population, expected to top nine billion before 2050, investors are becoming ever more creative. It might stretch consumer imaginations to source salmon from the land instead of the sea but, as Ethan Brown, founder and CEO of the wildly successful plant-based protein company Beyond Meat, puts it, a new idea is only “crazy until it’s not.” Beyond Meat, which makes vegan burgers that seep red juices to mimic blood in meat, is now valued at US$12 billion, while Atlantic Sapphire’s share price has increased by 280 per cent over the past three years and continues to inch upward despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic, if anything, has given land-based salmon farming even more of a boost as it disrupts the global supply chain and the air freight sector takes a hit. But even before 2020, Claire says consumers were turning toward more locally made products and home-grown foods. “Having a shorter value chain and a fresher product is really a big driver.” 

The world’s demand for protein is expected to climb with the globe’s growing population. Illustration: Atlantic Sapphire

There are at least 75 land-based salmon farms planned, operating or under construction around the world. Illustration: Atlantic Sapphire

Seafood customers searching for eco-friendly products

Daisy Berg, the first seafood buyer in North America to source Atlantic Sapphire salmon, says consumers are also increasingly looking for products that have a minimal environmental impact. “This customer base is willing to pay a little bit more … I’ve always believed that seafood customers vote with their forks.”

Berg, who prefers her salmon grilled, with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, is the seafood program and category manager for 18 New Seasons Market grocery stores in Portland, Oregon, and six New Leaf Community Markets in California. 

In 2017, she was tasked with trying to find Atlantic salmon for the Portland stores that met the company’s desire to source as much healthy, eco-friendly food as possible. New Seasons hoped to offer fresh salmon year-round, and that meant searching for alternatives to frozen wild salmon in wintertime.

“From day one, we said we were not wanting to carry farmed salmon until there was a change in the industry that aligned with our mission for seafood sustainability,” Berg says in a Zoom interview from Portland. “That’s always been a concern — the waste getting into the ocean and having an impact on the environment.”

Daisy Berg is a seafood buyer for New Seasons Market, a chain of about 25 stores in Oregon and California. Berg said she applauds Bluehouse Salmon for its taste and sustainability. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Heading off to the Seafood Expo in Boston, North America’s premiere seafood event of the year, Berg was skeptical she would find the right product. She lined up meetings with four farmed salmon suppliers, including Atlantic Sapphire. All were eager to show they were taking concerted steps to mitigate the environmental impacts of their operations. But Berg couldn’t help feeling she was just going through the motions. 

“I’d been digging in my heels for years,” said Berg, who grew up in New Mexico, far from the ocean, working at her parent’s fish market, selling fresh seafood flown in from the east and west coasts. “I’ll look to see if there’s anything,” she thought at the time, “and at the end of it there’s not going to be, and so we can just move on and stick with wild salmon.” 

Berg processes fish from Bluehouse Salmon at Ocean Beauty, a distributors warehouse in Portland, Oregon. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Berg unpacks a Bluehouse Salmon from her first order shipped from Florida. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

At the seafood expo, Berg partook in blind tastings of farmed salmon from the four companies, cooked without any flavourings: “a very blank slate, just to get the true flavour.” The Atlantic Sapphire salmon was comparable to chinook salmon, but milder, she says. “It has a pretty buttery, rich consistency.” 

A tour of the Bluehouse sealed the deal. Berg and other seafood buyers saw the first batch of silvery smolts schooling in tanks that recirculated 99 per cent of the water they used. “It just became a very obvious choice,” Berg says. “It just really hit me that this literally has zero impact on the ocean. None of it comes from the ocean. None of the waste will go to the ocean. There’s no chance for the fish to escape. It was really, really amazing.”

The subtropical Miami location, far from the natural range of cold-water Atlantic salmon, offers three things that are indispensable for land-based salmon production: fresh water, salt water and a place to dispose of waste. The fresh water comes from the Biscayne aquifer, the first of three subterranean water layers and also the source of Miami’s drinking and irrigation water. Only five per cent of the water used at the Bluehouse is fresh, according to Claire. And he says the facility uses less fresh water than the former tomato field, he says, because 99 per cent is recirculated — every 30 minutes throughout the facility — following filtration.

Next in the underground pancake layer comes the Floridan aquifer, a body of saltwater that stretches all the way to the Carolinas. The salmon are moved to tanks with saltier water in the smolt stage, when they would naturally spend time in estuaries where fresh and saltwater mix, and are kept in Floridan aquifer water for the year-long “grow-out” stage — the food industry term for fattening up. “There’s no commercial use for it, nobody wants saltwater,” Claire says. 

The Floridian aquifer has another advantage; its salty water has burbled there, untouched, for many thousands of years. “There are no viruses, no bacteria, no nothing. And because it’s so ancient, there is no man-made contamination.” As more microplastics wind up in fish, Atlantic Sapphire advertises its salmon as pollutant free.

A boulder zone, 1,000 metres below the earth’s surface, forms the third layer. Here, along with the city of Miami, the Bluehouse injects its waste, once solids and particles are filtered out. “We think it’s the most sustainable way to get rid of our wastewater,” Claire says.  

Packaging holding Bluehouse salmon at a seafood processing facility in Portland. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Bluehouse salmon sits on ice after being transported from Florida to Oregon. Berg described the fish as having a “buttery, rich consistency.” Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

The Bluehouse has ambitious — some would say visionary — plans to become ever more environmentally friendly. Local farmers are starting to use its wastewater solids for fertilizer. Atlantic Sapphire aims to use fish by-products, such as guts, head and bones, to make calcium and protein powder. Eventually, the company plans to power its operations by installing solar panels on the ample roof of the Bluehouse. It hopes to do away with the single-use Styrofoam used by the farmed salmon industry to ship fresh fish, replacing it with compostable packaging. It also sends fish to market by truck instead of by air, simultaneously shrinking both its carbon footprint and transportation costs. “One of our missions is that we do not put fish on airplanes,” Claire says.

The Bluehouse salmon sold in New Seasons Market stores starting in 2017 were a temporary exception. Berg was so keen to sell land-based salmon that, following her trip to the Boston Seafood Expo, she brokered a deal with Atlantic Sapphire to buy Bluehouse salmon from the company’s upstart facility in Denmark, which flew the fish to the Pacific Northwest. In early October, the Danish fish were swapped for the first order of 2,500 pounds — or 250 fish — from the Florida Bluehouse. The Florida fish will arrive by truck on an ongoing basis.

At first, Berg fretted that New Seasons customers wouldn’t accept any type of farmed salmon. “There was a lot of fear [about] introducing this fish into our market because of the bad rep that farmed salmon has had. But we put a lot of effort into the marketing piece of it.” 

Yet, she needn’t have worried. Soon, customers were asking for Atlantic Sapphire or Bluehouse salmon by name. 

“I truly believe that the entire [recirculating aquaculture systems] industry was waiting for Atlantic Sapphire to either succeed or fail,” Berg says. “I think the success they’re seeing right now, with the first harvest out of the Miami facility, is starting to get those other companies to really ramp up.”

Bluehouse Salmon are reared in fresh water and saltwater from Florida aquifers and Atlantic Sapphire has ambitions to sell waste byproducts as fertilizer. Berg said she was impressed to learn Bluehouse salmon have no impact on the ocean. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

When Berg visited the Bluehouse facility, she was impressed at how sustainably Atlantic Sapphire’s fish were raised. “It just really hit me that this literally has zero impact on the ocean. … None of the waste will go to the ocean. … It was really, really amazing.” Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Berg said she believes the entire land-based salmon farming industry has been watching closely to see if Atlantic Sapphire’s Bluehouse facilities would be a success. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

The New Seasons Market was concerned customers wouldn’t want to buy land-based salmon because farmed salmon have a bad reputation. But that has not affected sales, according to Berg. Photo: Celeste Noche / The Narwhal

Challenges for land-based salmon farming 

Recirculating aquaculture systems is the technology used in land-based salmon farming. Water is pumped through special filters to prevent disease or contamination, or treated with ultraviolet light. Atlantic Sapphire is not the only company that recirculates 99 per cent of its water; it’s an industry standard. 

But as the boom in recirculating aquaculture systems gets underway, Trond Davidsen, deputy managing director of the Norwegian Seafood Federation, cautions that land-based farming is still in its infancy, noting it’s challenging for companies to turn a profit. The multinational corporations — such as Mowi and Cermaq, two major players in B.C. — that have dominated the industry since it began to expand in the 1980s, are notably absent from land-based ventures, he points out. 

“Someday, we will succeed with land-based production,” Davidsen says in an interview. “But we’re not there yet.” 

Land-based fish farming is very capital intensive, and the financing, planning, construction and farming of the first generation of salmon can take five years or longer, Claire says. “These systems are also not plug and play. It takes a lot of experience to raise delicious five-kilogram salmon on land.” 

Water treated with ultraviolet light is pumped through Atlantic Sapphire’s Bluehouse systems. Although the company has been successful harvesting Atlantic salmon, it can be costly for other salmon farming companies to transition to land-based systems. Photo: Atlantic Sapphire

The spurt of investments in land-based salmon farming are largely driven by rising demand and higher prices for salmon worldwide, according to Davidsen. And as global demand for fish increases, salmon farming companies are finding it increasingly difficult to get access to ocean production in countries that have traditionally welcomed them, including Canada, Norway, Ireland and Iceland. In August 2019, for instance, the Danish government announced a ban on new aquaculture projects, including expansions of existing projects, saying any new production would have to take place on land. Washington State has banned net pen Atlantic salmon farms as of 2022.

According to the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association’s video, land-based salmon farming is ten times more expensive than ocean farming, with extra costs passed on to consumers. But Berg says Bluehouse salmon retails for US$15.99 per pound at New Seasons Market stores, on par with wild sockeye and wild coho. Farmed salmon raised in open net pens, by comparison, generally sells in the U.S. for US$7.99 to US$9.99 per pound, she notes. 

Land-based salmon farming also faces some of the same challenges that confront ocean-based open net pen farming. One major issue is how to source ingredients for salmon feed. 

“Already, the salmon has become a vegetarian,” Davidsen jokes. Up to 80 per cent of salmon feed is now derived from products such as soybeans or corn, a huge shift from the early days of salmon farming when pellets were manufactured from small wild fish such as herring, anchovies and capelin. Feed companies are now experimenting with insect proteins and microalgae as ingredients.

“Feeding the salmon with fish that can be eaten by humans is not very popular,” Davidsen says. “We need to find some new raw materials to produce fish feed in the future if we’re going to expand production.”

Aquaculture feed giant Skretting, which supplies Atlantic Sapphire’s operations, estimates that another one million tonnes of salmon feed will be required to keep pace with the boom in land-based salmon production. Skretting has developed a special food for salmon raised in recirculating aquaculture systems, which it calls Nutra RC. While the list of ingredients is proprietary, Skretting says Nutra RC binds faecal matter, “making it easier to filter and remove solid waste particles.”

The Bluehouse facility near Miami, Florida, uses enormous tanks to mimic the fresh water and saltwater salmon move through during various stages of their development. Photo: Atlantic Sapphire

The Zoom video clicks off as Claire walks to another section of the Bluehouse facility, where 450,000-gallon tanks, as deep as a two-storey building, hold salmon for the salt water “grow-out” phase. (An Olympic-sized swimming pool, by comparison, holds close to 660,400 gallons of water.) 

There are 36 grow-out tanks in the Bluehouse, which has six separate systems, each taking salmon through seven different stages, from eggs to harvest size. The six systems, which Atlantic Sapphire plans to double to 12, are completely separate from one another. If something goes wrong in one, others are likely to remain secure. 

“Every single stage is using the same technology,” Claire says when the camera comes back on. “The only thing is that as the fish get bigger the tanks get bigger; we have more water and more filtration power.” 

“It takes about one year for the fish to go from egg to smolt, about 300 grams. And then it takes another year to grow from 300 grams to five kilos, like the ones you’re seeing in the tank.” 

Dark shapes flit past in the foamy, sea green water: fully grown salmon, up to one metre long, that will be harvested that week. 

Asked what he would say to people who doubt that land-based salmon farming is viable, Claire chuckles and gestures beside him.

“Here is my response,” he says, “right there, swimming in the tanks.” 

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.