The Vancouver Aquarium has long trumpeted its dedication to conservation of aquatic life. Under a new and potentially controversial initiative, the institution wants to have its fish and eat them, too, by launching into the commercial aquaculture business.

“We kind of term it conservation aquaculture,” offers John Nightingale, the aquarium’s president and CEO. “Ideally, if we could expand our work and have it pay for itself, absolutely that would be a great thing.”

Visitors to the aquarium can observe native B.C. rockfish and wolf eels in a dreamy idyllic world — swimming in clear filtered sea water while surrounded by colourful invertebrates and plants moving languidly to the rhythm of artificial currents.

In an unseen breeding lab downstairs, a starker world exists for these same species, one where researchers toil over experimental tanks and bubbling tubes in the quest to raise rockfish and wolf eels not for educational enjoyment but — in a departure that may be unique to North America — for your dinner plate.

The pitch goes like this: local rockfish populations such as those in Howe Sound have suffered due to poaching, while European and Japanese eels have been heavily overharvested, including for the sushi market. Enter the aquarium with the notion of sustainable farming of rockfish and wolf eels to take some pressure off wild stocks while turning a buck at the same time.

Nightingale appreciates the public may take some convincing.

“I expect people will have questions and be quite interested. But if you can solve a conservation problem and make it pay for itself so you’re not relying on government grants or taxpayers to solve the problem, then that’s just one conservation issue taken off the table.”

The aquarium would do the research and development and would partner with an aquaculture company that would provide a facility and take the product to market.

Some critics suggest that larger protected areas with strict enforcement are a better solution and they fear the potential for the aquarium to create demand for wild wolf eels when no such fishery exists.

Others question how much impact the program can have.

“I don’t see it hurting, but I don’t see it making a big difference for rockfish,” says Ernie Cooper, a Ladner-based environmental consultant who has more than 25 years experience in the wildlife trade, including for Environment Canada and the World Wildlife Fund. “A legal fish is not necessarily going to stop an illegal activity. A lot of the people who go out and fish (poach) don’t want to pay for fish.”

As evidence of the money potentially at stake, T & T Supermarket in Vancouver’s Chinatown this week had live rockfish for sale $21.99 a pound, and live “rice field eel” (a species not threatened) for $20.99 — both well above live lobster at $15.99.

The aquarium has been breeding fish for about 45 years but has been more aggressively pursuing commercial aquaculture since the arrival of Shannon Balfry as director of aquatic animal breeding program about three years ago. “We have the ability to do it so why wouldn’t we do it?” says the PhD graduate from the University of B.C. “Nobody else is going to take that ball and run with it. We can do the ground work.”

Nightingale suspects that the aquarium aquaculture ambitions may be unique. He’s not alone. Rob Vernon, senior vice-president with the Maryland-based Association of Zoos & Aquariums, also said he is unaware of any other aquariums raising fish to be eaten but described Nightingale’s plan as “regionally significant” and “right in line with what public aquariums can do to support our wild fish populations.”

The aquarium plans to start with wolf eels and says it is open right now to finding a partner in the aquaculture industry to take it to the next level, predicting that a commercial operation could be running in three years. “Is there potential to actually grow these things at a commercially break-even rate and as a sustainable aquaculture species and take some heat off the wild? That’s still an open question,” Nightingale said.

Trials shows that wolf eels do poorly in open net pens typical of the salmon farming industry, so a land-based operation is the way to go. “Wolf eels get seasick in net pens,” Nightingale said. “If you think about how they live, in holes on the bottom, when it gets rough they just withdraw into the hole. They like to be anchored down, so the constant motion of a sea pen caused them to not eat very much.”

The International Union For Conservation of Nature rates Japanese eels — sold as unagi in sushi restaurants — as endangered and European eels as critically endangered. In B.C., wolf eels are not considered at risk. There is no commercial fishery for them, and any caught must be released. Recreationally, the species is catch and release only.

Nightingale emphasized the conservation element of the program. “It’s not that profit is paramount and damn everything else. But wolf eels fit great because there is a conservation issue over the rapidly dwindling supply of European and Japanese eels and there could be an economic opportunity.”

The aquarium’s overall breeding program has an annual budget of about $250,000. Balfry noted that the federal fisheries department also provided about $100,000 in the early 2000s in an effort to diversify aquaculture.

A female wolf eel typically gives birth in November to February to up to about 15,000 eggs, with a survival rate of about 80 per cent in the aquarium, Balfry said. Some of those eels are sent to other aquariums around the world, including 16 about to be shipped to Shanghai Aquarium. Another 200 to 300 are at the federal fisheries aquaculture and environmental research lab in West Vancouver.

And others are sacrificed in the name of science. “We use them for experiments,” Balfry confirms.

Part of her work is to manipulate living conditions for the eels so that they can breed faster by at least a few months, making the product available to consumers over a longer period of the year.

The eggs take about two months to incubate; then the young eels are ready to go on commercial feed, growing to 200 to 250 grams within a year, a size perfect for the sushi market. After that, their growth rate slows to the point that raising them to filet-size is unrealistic.

Normally aggressive and territorial, wolf eels come to accept living in large numbers in a tank, grouping together like a pit of snakes.

“They are lazy animals,” Balfry allows. “They don’t do anything, they just lie on the bottom of the tank.”

Designing a commercial aquaculture plan for rockfish will take longer. The aquarium mainly handles copper, quillback and black rockfish.

The challenge has been how to produce live feed for the fish larvae, which are only a few millimetres long at birth. “It’s the bottleneck in all marine finfish aquaculture around the world,” Balfry said.

Pregnant rock fish in the display tanks are used as brood stock, each producing up to about 500,000 larvae; the best survival rate to adulthood from one birth has been 140 copper rockfish in 2013. They start breeding at about age seven and can live to 100 years.

Where there is a birth, larvae are distributed into various experimental tanks to determine best growth and survival rates. They are typically fed rotifers, a microscopic zooplankton, to begin, then progress to brine shrimp.

Light, salinity and water temperatures are also varied to determined the most optimal conditions.

Totem Sea Farm in Jervis Inlet has about 140 copper rockfish, but they are also growing poorly in ocean net pens.

There are commercial groundfish trawl and hook-and-line fisheries for rock fish off the B.C. coast — specifically, for yellowtail, widow, canary, silvergray, yellowmouth, rougheye, shortraker, redstripe, and redbanded rockfish. Where yelloweye, quillback, copper, china and tiger rockfish are caught as bycatch, they are considered landed and accounted for against the fishing licence.

But none are targeting rockfish in local waters The federal government has mapped out rockfish conservation areas to protect stocks from sport angling; those maps, Nightingale argues, are used by poachers to target the best fishing spots.

“The creation of these rockfish conservation areas has invariably painted a bull’s eye on the chart.”

Balfry agrees: “There is clearly a demand and a market for them. In the wild, the rockfish stay in one area. If it’s a hot spot and (poachers) keep going back, they’ll decimate the population in a really short period of time. It’s a serious issue.”

Marine conservationists in Howe Sound agree poaching is a problem but are not sure that raising them in captivity for human food is the answer.

Roy Mulder, president of the Canadian Marine Environment Protection Society, would primarily like to see more protected areas for rockfish but with strict enforcement — which does not happen under the federal fisheries department.

In the past, the aquarium has transplanted black rockfish into local waters, with some success. “There’s a couple of places I know about that I don’t talk about in public that are looking not too bad right now,” Mulder said. “We don’t want anyone knowing where they are.”

He also doesn’t see rockfish being viable because it takes so long before they become productive breeders, but says breeding wolf eels could work.

Mulder does have a concern that the aquarium might create a market for a species, thereby encouraging poaching locally. “It’s definitely a likelihood. The second that humans develop a taste for something, they want more.”

Scuba divers especially enjoy viewing wolf eels and are protective of their known dens.

Cooper worked on captive rearing of marine life in the Vancouver Aquarium lab starting in the mid-1980s, prior to specializing in wildlife trade issues. Research from the lab also assists scientists by providing reference data on the life cycle of rockfish, including how to identify a species through its life cycle.

Cooper noted it remains to be seen whether the Japanese market would accept a wolf eel substitute. He notes, however, that the oceans’ fish stocks are under pressure and that aquaculture is a reality in order to feeding a growing global human population.

As for the future, where does one draw the line, if one can be drawn at all in a fluid environment. Are rockfish and wolf eels only the beginning of a program that might extend one day, who knows, even to marine mammals?

“I suppose, but that’s such a hypothetical question,” Nightingale replied. “I don’t ever see anyone doing a sea otter farm. The economics would not be there, if for no other reason, and money does tend to drive business.”

And so the aquarium’s clear waters take on a somewhat cloudier hue.

lpynn@vancouversun.com

===

Click here to report a typo or visit vancouversun.com/typo.

Is there more to this story? We'd like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. CLICK HERE or go to vancouversun.com/moretothestory