BC Salmon Farmers Association Fish Health Database

• Quarterly Reports
• Map of Fish Health Zones (165 kb)
• Map of Fish Health Zones (5.5mb)  .jpg

The BCSFA  Fish Health Database is a private-public partnership initiative designed to improve access to and information on the health of all cultured fish stocks in British Columbia. The database is a privately operated system which will amalgamate fish health information from private aquaculture facilities and federal and provincial fish enhancement programs operated by Fisheries and Oceans Canada and B.C. Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection.  The aquaculture industry and fish culture facilities will provide information for the database that will track and record the changing health status over time and geographically by fish health zone.

BCSFA Fish Health Quarterly Reports

Fish Health information has been provided to MAL through agreement with all participating parties contributing information to the BCSFA Database. This information comes from:

• Private freshwater and marine finfish aquaculture sites
• Public freshwater and where applicable, marine federal Salmon Enhancement facilities operated by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (FOC)
• Public freshwater and netpen facilities operated by Freshwater Fisheries Society (FwFS)

The purpose of the Database is to manage fish health information submitted by both private and public sector fish culture facilities under new Fish Health Management regulations in British Columbia. The Database will provide baselines for an objective picture of fish health in the Province. 

For proper interpretation of the quarterly fish health summaries please refer to the Review document for details.

Database Content and Reporting

For the private sector, the new fish health regulations require that all private sector companies provide data on fish health. Due to recent mergers there are 12 companies operating open net pen operations in British Columbia; seven of the companies are providing information to the database. These seven companies represent all the major Atlantic salmon and many of the Pacific salmon operations and produce greater than 95% of all farmed salmon in British Columbia.  The five remaining facilities are smaller operations producing mainly Chinook salmon.

The public sector facilities have agreed to provide data to the database. Up until October 2003, information has been provided from two of the FOC Salmon Enhancement facilities and four of the FwFS hatcheries. While this does not represent all of their facilities, it does provide a view of the fish health concerns facing these public sector operations.

Updated:  August 17, 2005