Pen sabotage nets fish loss of $3 million

An act of sabotage resulted in approximately 100,000 salmon, worth about $3 million, escaping from the pens of two of Cooke Aquaculture's fish farms off Deer Island. During the night of November 9-10, eleven cages were damaged at the Davidson's Head site off the northwestern side of Deer Island and the Boon Cove farm near Lord's Cove, with five cages completely emptied of fish, according to Nell Halse, director of communications for Cooke Aquaculture.

This is the fourth time this year that salmon pens around Deer Island have been sabotaged, with the earlier incidents occurring in May and August and resulting in fewer fish escaping. Each time the fish nets, including the protective bird and predator nets, had been deliberately cut by a diver.

The RCMP and Cooke's insurance company are investigating the acts of sabotage, and Cooke is offering a $125,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator. Halse notes that speculation about who would cut the nets includes disgruntled former employees, but she adds, "It's really a mystery to us."

"This has done an enormous amount of damage," says Halse. "The people that slashed those nets really have cut the lifeline of this community." Cooke Aquaculture has acquired and turned around fish farms that were not doing well financially and presently employs over 1,000 workers in New Brunswick, Maine, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Halse points out that there are other economic costs in addition to the loss of fish, including the effect on employment, since less feeding will need to be done now.

"These are completely cowardly acts," comments Opposition Aquaculture and Fisheries Critic Rick Doucet. "This affects many people in Charlotte County. We are all feeling the effects of a slowing economy and we do not need situations such as this to make it worse."

The RCMP are sending additional officers to the island, with some working full time on the case, according to Sgt. Greg MacAvoy of the RCMP district office in St. George. They will be looking at whether the earlier incidents are related to the latest one. MacAvoy says substantial jail terms are a possibility for anyone convicted, since the property damage charge, because of the dollar amount, could be an indictable offense, which is the equivalent to a felony conviction in the U.S.

The day the losses were discovered, Cooke acquired the necessary license from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to try to recapture the fish, using a herring seiner from Blacks Harbour and gillnets around the fish farms. "There were reported sightings all over the place," notes Halse. However, Bill Taylor, president of the Atlantic Salmon Federation, comments, "ASF's research in Cobscook Bay indicates that recapture efforts will be ineffectual as escaped salmon disperse very quickly once released from the sea cages in this fast-current area. Like escaped prisoners, they don't hang around the detention centre for long."

In August, a diver slashed nets at the Jamtrak site near the Davidson's Head site off Deer Island and at the Tongue Shoal site in Passamaquoddy Bay, with about 30,000 fish escaping. Some of the fish were five pounds in size but many were smolts, and Halse says the company believes they did not survive very long. Along with the losses in August, another 13,000 fish were lost from the Jamtrak site in May.

Cooke does have insurance to cover such losses, but Halse notes that there is a large deductible on that insurance. Cooke Aquaculture representatives have met with the RCMP and the insurance company to discuss how such sabotage can be prevented. Additional surveillance, including satellite surveillance, is being considered.

"Our saltwater guys are very angry and feel violated," she says of the cutting of the nets. "This is changing the way of doing business here. We were operating on a blanket of trust. Now we have to invest in surveillance and security in a way we never had to do before."

Reporting requirements differ
Following the loss of fish from the Cooke sites, the Atlantic Salmon Federation again criticized provincial and federal policies concerning the escape of salmon from fish farms. "Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and the New Brunswick government are doing little if anything to prevent and mitigate the recent escapes," says ASF President Taylor. "There is no process to handle this kind of disaster that can occur at the hand of nature or people and is especially prevalent during times of turmoil in the industry. This is just one of a series of escapes since the spring and still no action by governments nor do they feel any necessity to provide the public and the U.S. government with information on the escapes. For example, because government does not require mandatory reporting by the industry and because of government's lack of transparency, we don't know how many fish have escaped. These same governments are always front and centre, though, in promoting the benefits of the industry, openly contending that it is environmentally sustainable. Yet they do not put the rules in place to ensure this."

Taylor says, "It should be the Canadian government that takes the lead in reporting and working with the U.S. government to come up with an emergency response plan. The United States and Canada are remiss on working together to set up a cooperative bay management system, which is critical in the interconnected ecosystem of the Bay of Fundy and Gulf of Maine, where escaped salmon don't recognize borders."

Responding to Taylor's comments, Halse says, "It's beyond me how more government regulation would prevent acts of sabotage." And she notes that the Atlantic Salmon Federation not that long ago released hundreds of thousands of salmon to restock rivers but now is taking a purist approach that one should not release salmon that are only one generation removed from wild fish.

Although the salmon industry in New Brunswick presently is not required to report any escapes of salmon, fish farmers have done so on a voluntary basis, says Kim Lipsett, the director of aquaculture for the provincial government. She notes that the latest incident was reported immediately. Halse says Cooke Aquaculture contacted the provincial Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Aquaculture, the Maine Department of Marine Resources, the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission and the Atlantic Salmon Federation to inform them of the loss of fish.

In Maine, the reporting of any losses of fish is mandatory under the Maine Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (MEPDES) permit, according to Samantha Horn Olsen, aquaculture coordinator for the Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR). There are two levels for reporting. Any loss of large fish has to be reported within 24 hours to the DMR and the Department of Environmental Protection, so they can inform the ASF and the Atlantic Salmon Commission, which can put up any weirs if necessary in the rivers. Losses of small numbers of smaller fish have to be reported in writing to the DMR and DEP. Also, each fish farm is required to have a containment management plan that is audited by a third party, to ensure that no losses of fish have occurred.

Lipsett says the province is currently reviewing the aquaculture legislation and will consider whether to include a mandatory reporting requirement.

Threat to wild salmon
ASF is particularly concerned about the threat that the farmed salmon pose to wild salmon in nearby rivers. According to Taylor, ASF researchers scrambled to operate and man the fishways on the Magaguadavic River and the St. Croix River to monitor escapees entering the rivers. The researchers also swam through Charlotte County's Dennis Stream and New River to assess the damage. Taylor comments, "The mitigation shouldn't be left to nonprofit conservation groups. This is a government responsibility. We need government leadership in setting down and communicating action plans, and manpower and resources to find out where the fish are going and to put up barriers to the fish entering the rivers."

According to Taylor, six escaped fish, presumably from the incident, entered the Magaguadavic River on November 15, and all are sexually mature. Scientists have documented that escaped salmon do spawn with wild salmon.

However, Cooke Aquaculture maintains that the salmon, averaging 10 pounds in weight, were a year away from maturation, although "there may be odd fish that matured early," says Halse.

Lipsett says the fish are healthy, are of the St. John River strain and are not mature. Also, counting fences in the rivers should be removing any aquaculture fish, she observes.

Taylor, though, says any statement that the escapees will not cause any harm because they are "wild cousins" has been refuted by scientists, who have documented the weakened ability to survive in the wild of offspring from wild and farmed salmon mating.

Patrick Keliher, executive director of the Maine Atlantic Salmon Commission, believes the escapes pose a significant threat to the wild Atlantic salmon that are listed as endangered in the five Downeast Maine rivers, particularly the Dennys River. The run in the Dennys is very low, with numbers in the single digits, and with that many farmed fish around "the likelihood of cross breeding is greatly increased," he says. He agrees with Taylor that the fish were of mature size.

Because of icing at this time of year, the weir in the Dennys to capture fish entering the river has been removed, and the high water level this fall had made the weir inoperable anyway. The weir in the St. Croix River is still in place, and Keliher hopes that any farmed salmon entering that river can be trapped.

From the losses in May and August, eight or nine fish were captured in the Dennys and over 20 in the St. Croix.