VANCOUVER—Government documents provided to the Star this week show Fisheries and Oceans Canada was aware proposed salmon farms could have serious consequences for wild fisheries, including a prime shrimp trawling area, before issuing licenses for the B.C. projects.

The documents, obtained through Access to Information by biologist Alexandra Morton, outline concerns raised between 2014 and 2015 that proposed salmon farms could affect a long-term sea cucumber research site, and reduce the shrimp trawling area used by local fishermen.

“It was so blatant, they knowingly destroyed three fisheries in favour of the salmon farming industry,” said Morton, a vocal opponent of open-net fish farming whose research has raised concerns about the industry’s impact on wild salmon.

In a statement, Dan Bate, a spokesperson for Fisheries and Oceans Canada, said the department considers the impacts on the environment and competing interests when deciding which licences to grant.

“In making decisions about access to fisheries in the ocean that we share, DFO considers and attempts to balance the concerns of specific harvest groups, communities, First Nations and others,” he said.

Shawn Hall, a spokesperson for the B.C. Salmon Farmers Association, said ensuring space for his industry is “important.”

“We produce on average about 70 per cent of the salmon harvested in B.C. each year,” he said.

B.C. is the world’s fourth largest producer of farmed salmon and the industry generates $1.5 billion in economic benefits for the province each year, he added.

Those benefits haven’t trickled down to the small coastal village of Sointula, located on Malcolm Island off the north coast of Vancouver Island, though.

In February 2015 the Regional District of Mount Waddington, whose jurisdiction includes Sointula, sent a report to the B.C. government and Fisheries and Oceans Canada which said the fish farms Grieg Seafood was proposing for Clio Channel didn’t “appear to be consistent” with their regional plan.

An existing farm was already located in the channel, which is about one-kilometre wide, and the regional district said the addition of two more would amount to an “unprecedented concentration” of farms.

The farms were not expected to provide jobs for locals and the regional district anticipated the company would be “largely exempt” from property taxes, the report shows.

Ultimately, the regional district said it was unlikely the additional farms would contribute much to the region at all.

This week, the regional district’s administrator Greg Fletcher said their concerns about job opportunities weren’t addressed and the farms are taxed on “a very minimal level.”

At the same time, local shrimp trawlers based in Sointula lost out.

A letter from the BC Shrimp-By-Trawl Caucus to DFO in February 2015 highlighted the importance of the area to the local industry, which had already been “severely impacted” by the loss of fishing habitat in the past 15 years.

Approving the fish farms would be “inexcusable” and would affect fishermen who “historically obtain their livelihood from these specific waters,” by impeding their sailing and trawl routes, the letter said.

The Regional District had never before recommended that a fish farm proposal be rejected, said Heidi Soltau, the political representative for electoral area A with the regional district. They did it to help protect displaced shrimp trawlers.

“They actually take part in the local economy, whereas the large fish farm companies do most of their sourcing from Campbell River south,” she said.

“I thought it was a slam dunk that they weren’t going to be approved. It really, to me, was shocking that you could come up with direct evidence that it was going to impact people’s lives and they just went ahead with it anyways.”

The word from the docks is the fishermen don’t trawl for shrimp in the area much anymore and at least one of those fishermen sold his license, she said. “He just gave up. He’d fished that area almost exclusively.”

Fisheries and Oceans recognized that the farms would prevent 8 to 10 shrimp trawlers from accessing a portion of the Clio Channel fishing area and required the farms to modify the proposed anchoring system to reduce the impact on the shrimp trawlers. The trawlers could then either fish around the farms or go somewhere else, Bate said.

The fish farm application was also supported by the Tlowitsis First Nation, whose core area includes a portion of Clio Channel, he added.

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Tlowitsis Hereditary Chief John Smith said the farm has meant significant economic benefits for his Nation. The dollars they’ve brought in through both rent for the tenure and benefits from the fish harvests are allowing the Nation to start construction on a residential community, he said.

“The Sointula shrimpers, they can still fish there,” he said, adding “their cause is no more important than mine.”

“We’re finally getting some benefits out of our territory.”

In a another case, involving two Marine Harvest farms, DFO approved the proposed farms after concerns were raised by its own scientists that they could affect a long-time experimental sea cucumber research site. The site, which documents show had been in place for 15 years, was used to help inform sea cucumber harvest management.

In a comment on the application, a DFO research biologist wrote that “the proposed finfish aquaculture sites will impact (our) ability to provide stock assessment advice and compromise long-term monitoring underway in the Tolmie Channel area.”

Bate, a spokesperson for the department, told the Star Thursday that after an “in depth review” they concluded that DFO science could provide comparable sea cucumber stock assessments as the research site.

An alternative sea cucumber study location may be re-established if needed, he said.

Jeremy Dunn, a spokesperson for Marine Harvest, said the sites, located in Cougar Bay and Alexander Inlet, were replacements for farms that were previously located in shallower waters and no longer met regulatory requirements.

The new sites were in deeper areas with more current and wave action, which means better water flow for the fish farms and less impact on the surrounding environment, he said.

These farms are also operated in partnership with the local First Nation, Dunn said. He added that Marine Harvest contributes to the BC economy, employing 600 people and harvesting about 45,000 tons of salmon a year.

But to Morton, the open net pen farms are an outdated model that pose a risk to wild salmon and other marine line.

She and others, including several First Nations and environmental organizations, are pushing the province to not renew 20 fish farm tenures up for renewal this month in the Broughton Archipelago.

Ultimately, they want to see the province follow the State of Washington’s lead and move the industry on land.

Correction - June 15, 2018: This article was edited from a previous version to include the titles of Jeremy Dunn and Heidi Soltau. They were mistakenly omitted in the previous version.

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