WASTE MANAGEMENT
Water quality is important for all users of marine and fresh water, including the aquaculture industry. Aquaculture operators rely on a healthy aquatic environment in which to grow their stock. Every user must do their part to minimize their effects on the water from all human activities, at work or play.
Federal, provincial and territorial governments monitor aquaculture operations to ensure the farms are operating responsibly. When managed properly, waste from aquaculture operations pose a low risk to the surrounding environment. Proper site selection of the farm and farm management are essential to ensure that wastes do not have long term, negative effects on the environment.
Please visit the links below to learn more about what Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) is doing to ensure that the waste from aquaculture operations is managed and monitored in a responsible way.
Management Tools
There are a number of legislative, regulatory and licensing measures in place to manage waste from fish and shellfish farms. Aquaculture operators are also bound by industry codes of practice, both at the national and provincial level, aimed at minimizing effects on the marine and freshwater environment from waste.
Fisheries Act
Canadian Environmental Assessment Act
Provincial
British Columbia’s Finfish Aquaculture Waste Control Regulation
Monitoring
DFO and other federal, provincial and territorial government departments monitor aquaculture operations. This may be done by reviewing monitoring data gathered by aquaculture operators as part of the requirements of their licence, lease or other approval, or by conducting periodic on-site audits of operations. For example, DFO habitat officers routinely examine monitoring information to ensure that the farms are operating in accordance with the requirements set out during the review process, and that the mitigation measures being applied by the operator are effective in minimizing fish habitat effects.
British Columbia conducts annual inspections and spot audits of all active salmon farms to ensure they are following the rules and makes these data available via the internet. Click on the link to view
BC Compliance and Enforcement reports.
Scientific Research
Below are links to DFO’s research studies of the effects on the marine and freshwater environment from waste produced by aquaculture operations. Research is on-going and will continue to inform decisions related to matters of public policy and management of the aquaculture industry. For studies undertaken at the provincial or international level, please visit specific websites listed in the Links section on this website.
State of Knowledge Series
The State-of-Knowledge Initiative is a scientific review that provides the current status of scientific knowledge and recommends future research studies. The review covers marine finfish and shellfish, and freshwater finfish aquaculture. The review focuses primarily on scientific knowledge relevant to Canada.
Read more …
Far-field environmental effects of marine finfish aquaculture
Chemical use in marine finfish aquaculture in Canada: A review of current
practices and possible environmental effects
Near-field organic enrichment from marine finfish aquaculture
Environmental fate and effect of chemicals associated with Canadian
freshwater aquaculture
Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat (CSAS)
CSAS coordinates the peer review of scientific issues for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. CSAS works with scientists across the department to develop integrated overviews of issues in fish stock dynamics, ocean ecology and use of living aquatic resources, like aquaculture, and to identify emergent issues quickly.
Read more …
Aquaculture - Environment Interactions: Scientific Advice for Finfish Cage
Aquaculture in the Marine Environment
The suitability of DEPOMOD for use in the management of finfish aquaculture
sites, with particular reference to Pacific Region (2005)
Benthic monitoring methods for habitat management of finfish mariculture in
Canada (2005)
Framework for a benthic aquaculture monitoring program in the Pacific Region
(2004)
A perspective on the use of Performance Based Standards to assist in fish
habitat management on the seafloor near salmon net pen operations in British
Columbia (2002)
To search for additional CSAS studies that are related to waste management and aquaculture operations, please visit the
CSAS search engine.
Aquaculture Collaborative Research and Development Program (ACRDP)
The ACRDP is a DFO initiative to increase the level of collaborative research and development activity between the aquaculture industry and the department, and in some instances with other funding partners.
Read more …
Aquaculture information review - An evaluation of known effects and
mitigations on fish and fish habitat in Newfoundland and Labrador
Development of acoustic mapping tools for finfish aquaculture – site
selection, environmental effect mitigation and monitoring optimization
Ecosystem experiment to assess environmental impacts of freshwater cage
aquaculture |
