Newfoundland and Labrador’s minister of Fisheries and Land Resources, Gerry Byrne, has directed Northern Harvest to provide full disclosure of further salmon mortality events, and has suspended licences.
The minister stated that he has been informed by officials from Northern Harvest Seafood Farm (MOWI Canada East) that additional salmon cage sites have been affected by a mass salmon mortality event on the south coast.
“The additional mortality numbers make total numbers higher than initially reported by the company. As a result of the ongoing investigation and evidence of non-compliance, I am suspending all affected Northern Harvest Seafood Farms licenses and issuing a directive that requires the company to continue the cleanup of the sites. I will be amending license conditions to all unaffected Northern Harvest Seafood Farms and other associated Mowi license sites in the coming days,” he said, adding that he has asked Mowi’s international president to make himself available as soon as possible for a face-to-face meeting with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
“I have also directed Northern Harvest officials to make themselves readily available to media and provide full disclosure, as per our recently amended policies and procedures for aquaculture.”
Ten of the 47 licences held by Mowi Canada in Newfoundland are subject to suspension, following the loss of an estimated 2.6 million fish, roughly a 5000 tonne biomass.
“Mortalities were caused by prolonged high seawater temperatures that created low oxygen conditions. All licenses suspended are related to sites experiencing these mortalities. The suspension will to our knowledge not impact our remaining operations in Newfoundland,” stated a Mowi spokesman.
Gerry Byrne said that this reconfirms the need for the independent, third-party review of the salmon mass mortality event being conducted by Memorial University and the need to reform the Memorandum of Understanding outlining federal and provincial responsibilities for aquaculture signed in 1988.
“Our government is committed to making the aquaculture industry safer and recently implemented new policies and procedures, including enacting strict policies to compel companies to disclose disease and all mortality events regardless of cause in a timely manner,” he said.
“I want to reassure the people whose livelihoods depend on the aquaculture sector that we continue to focus on solutions that strengthen policies and practices to ensure public transparency is ever-present.”
