Marine Harvest Canada is placing a full-page advertisement in today’s North Island Gazette to update readers on the results of its sea lice management plan in the Broughton Archipelago. This is the fourth advertisement by Marine Harvest in as many months and helps explain the successful management of sea lice on farmed salmon.
“The out-migration of juvenile salmon began in March and is soon to be finished in June.” says Clare Backman, Director of Environmental Compliance and Community Relations for Marine Harvest Canada. “Over the past months, Marine Harvest has taken significant action to reduce and eliminate the potential for sea lice transfer from its salmon farms to wild juvenile salmon.”
Marine Harvest staff monitor farmed salmon monthly for presence of sea lice. In May, Marine Harvest fish farms in the Broughton area averaged 0.17 lice per fish. The levels of sea lice are lower than last year’s levels during the same period. Since 2004, Marine Harvest has made all sea lice monitoring results available on its website at www.MarineHarvestCanada.com.
“We are pleased to report that these results are well under the threshold level of 3.0 lice per fish at which our fish would need to be treated according to the Sea Lice Action Plan developed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the provincial government, and the industry.” says Backman.
Sea lice are a naturally occurring parasite found on various fish in the Pacific Ocean and are initially passed from wild sources to farmed salmon (Kabata 1973, Beamish et al 2005).
Farmed salmon is BC’s largest agricultural export. In 2008, Marine Harvest Canada will produce about 42,000 tonnes of high quality, fresh Atlantic salmon. The Company employs about 500 people at operations on Vancouver Island and the Central Coast.
www.marineharvestcanada.com/documents/gazette_ad_05_22_2008_web.pdf
