Demand from US buyers for farmed BC salmon is outstripping supply and the situation is expected to continue, says an industry spokeswoman.
About 85% of the farmed salmon produced off BC's coast is sent to the United States where, last week, officials announced total closure this year of the commercial and sport chinook salmon fisheries off California and most of Oregon.
"We've been meeting with a bunch of distributors over the last couple of weeks just to talk a little bit about the product and so on," Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association, said this week. "What I continually hear is there's frustration from the retailers about the lack of access to increased amount of BC product."
BC fish farmers produced about 72,000 tonnes of salmon in 2006. Walling said the amount will be the same this year. Production is limited at this time to what can be produced at existing farms, Walling said. Farmers hold 126 licences and about 80 sites are operating at any one time, because some are being fallowed.
"We can't meet the market demand for our product. That's been going on [for] three, four years."
BC salmon farmers could likely sell double what they've been sending south of the border, Walling said.
