Cermaq Canada has stopped selling Aquaculture Stewardship Council-certified salmon it raises in British Columbia due to a sea lice outbreak at its farms in Clayoquot Sound.
The move comes just days after a press release by the aquaculture watchdog Sea Choice, which claimed the Aquaculture Stewardship Council is certifying salmon with extremely high sea lice counts.
The press release stated that some of Cermaq’s farms at Clayoquot Sound “report elevated lice loads up to 10 times Fisheries and Oceans Canada’s management threshold.” The report went on to state that “three of the ASC-certified farms [at Clayoquot Sound] are actively harvesting with sea lice counts ranging from 24 to 31 lice per fish.”
Cermaq Managing Director David Kiemele said that the company takes sea lice infestation seriously and is “actively addressing it as quickly as possible through a number of strong actions, both immediate and longer-term in nature.”
Kiemele said that the company was moving to depopulate some farms to try and get the lice under control, and in other instances was giving affected fish a hydrogen peroxide bath to kill the lice. According to Kiemele, the company has also invested in a USD 12 million (EUR ) sea lice control barge which will be introduced within the next year.
Sea lice can spread from farmed salmon to wild salmon, and Sea Choice claims this has already come to pass with wild juvenile salmon being found with up to 20 lice per fish. Sea lice infestation can often kill young salmon, the organization said.
“Fish from these ASC-certified farms are being marketed as environmentally responsible. In reality, they’re endangering wild salmon,” Karen Wristen said. Wristen is the executive director of Living Oceans Society, which along with the David Suzuki Foundation and the Ecology Action Centre, form the Sea Choice partnership.
