The objective of the project
is to identify coastal areas that are suitable for salmon aquaculture,
thus allowing policy makers to device better regulation and monitoring
system to ensure environmental sustainability of Altantic salmon farming.
At the turn of the 20th century, many of the Earth's natural resource
is running out. Consequently, human has been cultivating many resources
to take control of the their natural reproduction. For example,
most of the raw food sources are currently cultivated at large scale.
Cultivating fish at industrial scale seems to be a new trend globally.
For B.C., despite aquaculture happened more than a century ago, it
was not until the 1980s when aquaculture became an industry
(Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries, 2001).
There is a heated debate on whether salmon aquaculture should be allowed
to expand. The concerned species of the project as well as the
public, Atlantic salmon, is a foreign species in the Pacific water.
It is highly valued for aquaculture due to its fast rate of growth
and the higher market value. Atlantic salmon became a commercially
viable and justified species. Yet the foreign nature of the
species also poses threat to the native salmon communities, multiplied
by the problem encountered in salmon farming in practice. The
two camps of the debate, the B.C. Government, Ministry of Agriculture,
Food and Fisheries, and the Department of Fisheries and Ocean are
the main advocates for salmon farming, while non-government organizations
led the opposition, including the David Suzuki Foundation, and figure
like Dr. John Volpe of University of Victoria. Their main argument
is over the potential economic benefit and the ecological damage,
as expected.
Naturally, B.C.'s salmon farms scatter along the coast of B.C., Vancouver
Island, and Queen Charlotte Island. With the recent lift of
salmon aquaculture moratorium, the B.C. aquaculture industry has to
get ready for an expansion. As more and more salmon farms will
be lining the coast, it will increase the ecological pressure of the
surrounding area. The aim of this project is to locate area
that is suitable for salmon farming, specifically for farming Atlantic
salmon, so policy makers can better identify regions where special
attention is needed.
