Source: Simon Fraser University
http://www.sfu.ca/mediapr/news_releases/archives/news10190601.htm Farming salmon in fresh waterOctober 19, 2006 Contact: Larry Albright, 604.626.6747, albright@sfu.ca
Carol Thorbes, 604.291.3035, cthorbes@sfu.ca October 19, 2006 Farming salmon in fresh water Many say it can’t be done. But Larry Albright, a recently retired marine microbiologist at Simon Fraser
University, is proving that salmon — even the prized sockeye — can be farmed
successfully in fresh water. "All Pacific salmon, including sockeye, coho, chinook, chum and pink salmon
can be cultured throughout their entire lifecycle in freshwater," says
Albright. The scientist has 17 years experience raising trout and now salmon
in fresh-water fish farms and co-owns a fresh-water fish farm in Langley. "I
have personally cultured the same stock of domesticated sockeye salmon
through four sequential lifecycles in fresh water only." Speaking before the provincial government’s touring special committee on
Sustainable Aquaculture on October 18, Albright went beyond explaining how
salmon can be farmed in fresh water. He predicted that switching from
conventional salmon farming in ocean-based netted pens to enclosed inland
freshwater ones would have significant positive outcomes: Disease- and antibiotic-free: Unlike conventional commercial fish
farms, fresh-water fish farms rarely use antibiotics and other
chemotherapeutants because their ground-based water sources don’t have
common pathogens. Improved public perception of fish farming: Inland and groundwater-fed
fish farms are not mired in the controversy that shrouds ocean-based fish
farming. Recent research done by other scientists at SFU and elsewhere
demonstrates that ocean-based fish farming breeds sea lice in numbers that
kill nearby juvenile wild salmon. Smaller ecological footprint: While ocean-based fish farms cover
several kilometres of seacoast, a typical fresh-water farm occupies no more
than five acres of land.(electronic photo files available on request) Larry Albright: Backgrounder Albright’s lab was the first to work out the sealice’s lifecycle.
Albright chairs the B.C. Fresh Water Aquaculture Association. He is also
voluntarily helping the N’quatqua Band in D’arcy, just north of Pemberton,
B.C., run one of the province’s few commercial fresh water fish farms on
native land. Albright says his main challenge in rearing fresh water salmon is
getting them to market. While his fresh-water reared trout ends up on the
tables of several high-end seafood restaurants in Vancouver, he has yet to
pique the interest of seafood chefs in his fresh-water salmon. The fish are
about a third smaller than their salt-water cousins and, similar to
conventionally farmed salmon, their flesh is a less vibrant pink. Albright
hopes to change popular perception that appetizing salmon has to be a
certain size and colour. Albright estimates that the cost of commercially farming salmon in
fresh water would be 1.3 times higher than the cost of commercially farming
trout in fresh water.
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