Sustainable Aquaculture — Issue No. 35 — Monday, February 19, 2007 (HTML)

2007 Legislative Session: Third Session, 38th Parliament
SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE
MINUTES AND HANSARD

Robin Austin, MLA
Chair

Craig James
Clerk Assistant and
Clerk of Committees

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE



CONTENTS

		Page

Presentations		1059
	A. Castledine
	A. Thomson
	C. Pearce
	J. Austin
	B. Clapp
	M. James

Chair:	* Robin Austin (Skeena NDP)
Deputy Chair:	* Ron Cantelon (Nanaimo-Parksville L)
Members:	* Al Horning (Kelowna–Lake Country L) * Daniel Jarvis (North Vancouver–Seymour L) * John Yap (Richmond-Steveston L) * Gary Coons (North Coast NDP) * Scott Fraser (Alberni-Qualicum NDP) * Gregor Robertson (Vancouver-Fairview NDP) * Shane Simpson (Vancouver-Hastings NDP) * Claire Trevena (North Island NDP) * denotes member present


Witnesses:	James Austin (President, Underwater Harvesters Association) Al Castledine (Ministry of Agriculture and Lands) Bruce Clapp (Underwater Harvesters Association) Michelle James (Executive Director, Underwater Harvesters Association) Dr. Chris Pearce (Fisheries and Oceans Canada) Andrew Thomson (Fisheries and Oceans Canada)

R. Austin (Chair): Good morning. My name is Robin Austin. I'm the Chair of the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture. We are here this morning to hear briefings from officials from the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and members from the Underwater Harvesters Association with regards to geoducks.

I would like to note that today's meeting of the committee is a public meeting, which will be recorded and transcribed by Hansard Services. A copy of today's transcripts, along with the minutes of this meeting will be printed and will be made available on the committee's website at www.leg.bc.ca/cmt/aquaculture. As well, an audio recording of today's meeting will be archived on this website.

Before we begin, I would ask each committee member to introduce themselves, starting on my far right.

Now I would like to invite Al Castledine, from the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, to proceed with his briefing.

I'll be providing the first presentation this morning — the first of three. I'll be speaking about the process that has taken place over the past 15 years or so to set conditions for geoduck farming in British Columbia, and I am speaking on behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

As I mentioned, mine will be the first of three presentations, and they probably will be a bit dry compared to the speakers who are actually engaged in the business of research, harvesting and growing of geoduck. But that's part of the job of being a bureaucrat, I suppose.

I dragged this photograph out of an archive simply to show a picture of a geoduck. This photograph was taken in around 1915 in Washington State. As you can see, it's an intertidal activity. British Columbia doesn't have the same kind of intertidal flats as Washington State, at least not any as extensive, and we have very little intertidal harvesting in British Columbia. This is a very large animal, and as you all know, it's quite a long-lived animal. In fact, some of them that were around in 1915 are probably still here.

The geoduck fishery, just to start off, in British Columbia is worth about $30 million or $40 million a year, and it is a subtidal activity. That is, it takes place in deep water.

As mentioned already, we've been engaged in discussions on geoduck farming in the province since about 1990. This was based on the success that occurred in Washington State, where they had hatchery technology that was proving successful; an interest in farming and enhancement, that is increasing the quantity through adding more seed to the environment; the limited TAC — total allowable catch — and the increased value of geoduck. They had certainly started to increase in value by the early '90s.

In the early '90s the Pacific Biological Station conducted the first seeding trials at Gabriola Island and Ritchie Bay in Clayoquot Sound. In 1993 the province issued the first hatchery licence for geoduck for small-scale trials, and Island Scallops was the organization that was issued the licence. They were working at that time in cooperation with the Underwater Harvesters Association, which is the organization that represents the geoduck fishermen.

At the same time discussions were proceeding between the province, what is now known as the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands, then known as the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Fisheries — or MAFF — and the Underwater Harvesters on how to move forward collaboratively.

In 1994 DFO endorsed a broad policy on new shellfish projects. These included animals such as urchins and sea cucumbers. At that time their view was that projects should be experimental in nature, they should be endorsed by the province and that any new aquaculture activities should not displace third parties.

On the discussions went until 1995 when we were still discussing these key points in some of the issues that had been raised. Obviously, there was a concern about conservation and protection of the resource. There were discussions around resolution of provincial and federal roles. The province owns the seabed. It issues tenures and operating licences, while the federal

government manages the fishery and protects fish habitat. There needed to be some discussion on how to reconcile these interests.

There was discussion about how to mark tenure boundaries. These are in deep water, so it's not like a beach tenure where you can lay out blocks. There was discussion about pre-seeding harvest fisheries prior to outplanting — that is, in an area that is known to have geoduck, which would normally be available to the wild fishery, what do you do with those geoduck prior to allocating that property to aquaculture.

There were discussions on how to distinguish cultured from wild product and discussions about concerns that tenures may be used as a stage for poaching or laundering — that is, taking illegally harvested wild product and pretending it came from a licence. We think we've since resolved that issue through chain-of-custody requirements. Of course, any project on geoduck aquaculture would require an evaluation.

One of the organizations that exists in the province is this Introductions and Transfers Committee which sets the conditions for the movement of aquatic species from one part of our waters to another. In that they would also include geoduck. They based their evaluations on fish health and genetic and ecosystem protection. That Transfers Committee has been around since the mid-'70s, I believe, and does concern itself with these issues.

Some of the conditions imposed. Broodstock and seed were to be tested and found to be free from disease. We would operate in shellfish zones. Seed could only be planted back into the zone of origin. If you took broodstock from one area, then the progeny could only go back to where those broodstock came from. Then any activities would have to have prior approval of DFO fisheries management and habitat managers.

In 1996 there was a letter of understanding struck between Canada and British Columbia on experimental geoduck culture. You may have heard reference to this through discussions over the past month or so. This LOU was created to facilitate a pilot subtitled "Geoduck aquaculture project."

Five subtidal areas were granted to Fan Seafoods. F-a-n isn't an acronym; it's actually the name of the company. These five areas total 86½ hectares. Two of the sites were off Marina Island, two off Savary and one off Texada. You may ask why five and not one? These sites are different, and it was felt there was a need to test the technology in different areas.

This LOU stipulated that the experiment would take place over a five-year period and be reviewed in 2001. During that period of time no new subtidal land was to be tenured for geoduck aquaculture, although there was provision for people to try and raise geoducks in containers that were above the sea bottom on existing subtidal tenures. This would be a fairly difficult thing to try and accomplish.

We still allowed applications to add geoduck to existing intertidal tenures, but harvesting was to be restricted until approved methods of harvesting were available and a chain of custody was developed. To date there has been no intertidal harvest for commercial sales.

At the same time there was an agreement made between the department, Fan Seafoods and the Underwater Harvesters Association, which provided the conditions that I've been referring to earlier — site marking and the underwater harvesters being provided the opportunity to harvest the tenure prior to seeding. Conditions for project evaluation were set. For example, there was a requirement for annual reporting of seeding, survival, growth, etc. There are a couple of pages of conditions that you can see if you wish. DFO agreed to provide access to sufficient broodstock for the work.

There was a second hatchery licence granted during this period to Innovative Aquaculture near Nanaimo, and container grow-out, which I referenced a moment or two ago, was approved for two existing subtidal tenures. Neither is actually in production. In 1998 DFO provided further clarification to their aquaculture policy for culture and enhancement.

Part of the discussion around geoduck spurred the federal department to develop a discussion paper on access to and culture of marine invertebrates generally. This was a national policy which goes beyond geoduck and considered other animals like urchins and, as I mentioned earlier, sea cucumbers. This was done as background to development of a federal policy for sustainable culture-based marine invertebrate seafood industry and to guide orderly development for diversification of aquaculture and experimental enhancement activities.

This ultimately led to a national policy on access to wild aquatic resources as it applies to aquaculture which was completed in 2004. That month may not be entirely accurate.

Proceeding on, in 2001 the technical and economic feasibility of the Fan Seafoods project was evaluated based on two documents: a final technical report from Fan on annual results and a Science Council of B.C.–funded geoduck grow-out study report. At the same time, there had been site visits by staff working for the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands to observe site use, predator control methods and inventory levels.

It was concluded at that time that commercial-scale technical feasibility of subtidal culture was demonstrated from a growth and survival perspective. What wasn't clear at that time was whether economic feasibility had been demonstrated. What was found was that a prediction that the animals would be harvest size within five years was not correct. It took longer for them to grow to that size.

Since that time the economic feasibility has been confirmed. As I mentioned, in 2001-2002 the Fan project was reviewed by DFO and MAL and agreement was made that technical feasibility had been demonstrated. However, at that time there was an agreement to extend the hiatus on new subtidal ground for three years while some additional work was undertaken — work to fully demonstrate economic feasibility, to

address some outstanding issues and the development of a federal-provincial management framework to be established.

What were some of the issues? I mentioned the federal policy on access to wild stocks. That policy was completed in 2004. The fate of existing stocks on tenures and pre-seeding harvesting. This was essentially to make sure that someone could not come in and say they wanted an aquaculture tenure, harvest the wild geoducks and make windfall profits.

Site marking was discussed. Trade of custody of culture product was addressed, and now there is a process for notification when harvest takes place from aquaculture sites. They're tracked to the processing plant so that there can't be any illegal product brought on board during that transaction. The other issue is: how do we identify suitable land that does not displace other users? It's a major concern of the wild fisherman.

So during this period of time, 2003-2005, there were several workshops sponsored on the key issues and opportunities. The DFO access policy was finalized. A workplan between the federal and provincial agencies was developed.

The province developed interim policies for existing intertidal, subtidal and new subtidal lands. These are substantially different from each other, and these have been posted on our website for over a year. The results are an agreement to limit initially all new geoduck aquaculture licences to the Gulf of Georgia, to test the new policy framework and to allow regulatory monitoring.

There was a concern that if sites were approved on the central coast where there may not be as much oversight, it may result in nefarious activities of some kind, and we wanted to explore the gulf. There were other reasons. It had been fished for many years — still productive, but there were areas that had declined in productivity.

Also, our staff produced a document called Geoduck Aquaculture: Estimated Costs and Return for Subtidal Culture in B.C. These are very familiar to people working in the agriculture industry, where the background to an activity is described and an economist does look at the input costs, the costs for access to the major materials — such as, land, seed, etc. — and then tries to determine what kind of profits might arise from the activity, based on variables such as supply of seed costs, harvest, prices, etc. This was done to try and instruct people that, you know, there's a lot to be considered when you get into an activity like this. It doesn't guarantee that you're going to make any money on it.

The guiding principles for new subtidal areas were that we were going to take a systematic approach — that there would be a fair, transparent process. You may have seen part of this, in that opportunities were posted on government websites.

There is certainly recognition of first nations interests, both from a title's perspective, but also from their interest in involvement eventually in geoduck aquaculture as an economic activity. Certainly, conservation of the wild resource was a major principle and recognition of the needs of the existing fishery.

From 2005-2007 the subtidal lands allocation process was finalized with stakeholder advice, based on workshops that had been held. Fifty-five possible sites in the strait were identified, narrowed to ten based on capability and surveys by some of the proponents, proximity to first nations reserves and other factors. Opportunities on these ten selected sites were announced in December 2005, with a deadline of February 2006. These applications were reviewed by government and assessed through interagency referrals, first nations consultation, public advertising and open houses.

So where are we now? Culture continues on the original five subtidal areas that were awarded to Fan Seafoods in 1996. Product is being harvested and marketed from those tenures. Of the ten new subtidal tenures that are being offered, three tenures have been issued, but one aquaculture licence has been issued. That, of course, is married to one of those three tenures. Seven tenures are still pending the Lands review process. Nine aquaculture licences are awaiting adjudication.

I mentioned intertidal tenures earlier. There are six that are active. They have seeded. Harvesting is restricted, and studies are underway to determine appropriate harvesting methods. Dr. Pearce will address, I think, some of that when he talks about research.

Overall, what I've described is a process that has taken place over 15 years or so of research, policy development and collaboration, and how they have now resulted in these new opportunities, which are limited to the Strait of Georgia.

I'd be happy to answer any questions, but I would like to ask the Chair to perhaps consider allowing the other presenters to go ahead. I'm sure some of the questions that have been triggered by my talk will be answered either fully or in part by their presentations. That's a suggestion only that I'll raise at this point.

Do Members want to just wait and have the rest of it, and then we'll have questions afterwards? Okay, great. We'll go on to the second presentation, then.

A. Thomson: Good morning. My name is Andrew Thomson. I'm the acting director of aquaculture management for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. I'd like to thank you again for the invitation to appear before you. I'd like to introduce at this time Dr. Chris Pearce, one of my colleagues with Fisheries and Oceans, who studies geoduck aquaculture, among other things, for our science branch.

I don't have a formal presentation this morning, but I would like to make some opening comments. Then we'll let Chris talk about his research, which, as Al already alluded to, is probably much more interesting than more government bureaucratic stuff.

I want to introduce the process here today. Al gave a very thorough introduction of how we got here today. You know, in my experience of looking at this introduction of geoduck aquaculture, it's been a very measured and controlled development for a new aquaculture industry. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans has worked very closely with British Columbia to develop a strategy for very measured growth.

In 2004 scientists at the Pacific Biological Station, along with Fisheries managers, produced what's called a PSARC — which is the Pacific Science Advisory Review Committee — paper on the potential impacts of subtidal geoduck aquaculture and the conservation of wild geoduck populations and the harvestable TAC, or total allowable catch, in British Columbia.

This was part of our measured process in which we, as responsible managers, asked for scientific advice as to what potential impacts subtidal geoduck aquaculture could have, and they would provide recommendations for where we would go in terms of introducing mitigation measures that would address those potential impacts.

The paper provided recommendations regarding site selection, maintaining the genetic health of the wild stocks and surveying for potential diseases. DFO management has taken these recommendations to heart and developed mitigation measures to address them. For example, at the moment there is no intertidal expansion of the industry, because we are still conducting research on the potential effects of intertidal aquaculture.

In terms of site selection, we went through with our Fisheries managers and with the Underwater Harvesters Association to classify beds, and we've chosen beds that had already been fished or were at a lower productive value so as to not remove high-productive values from the fishery.

In terms of genetics we've limited the culture activity to a single zone. That is a precautionary move to allow that the individuals being raised are of the same genetic population. We've set a minimum number of geoducks for broodstock and spawning to allow for a large number of animals being collected, to allow for a wide variety of genetic material and to improve the genetic fitness of that being raised. We require that baseline genetic samples are collected in order to monitor for changes to the wild populations as we go through this.

To date, geoducks did not indicate any infectious diseases. However, we're still requiring samples to be collected during pre-seed harvesting in order to aid in our knowledge of the diseases of geoducks. As Al already mentioned, we have a chain-of-custody process in development to alleviate concerns of laundered product entering the product through geoduck aquaculture.

I just want to speak on one other aspect here. As Al mentioned, in 2004 we introduced the "access to wild stock for purposes of the aquaculture" policy. Through that policy we require pre-seed harvesting to occur on each of these sites to reduce the natural biomass and return some benefit to the commercial harvesters before that area is tenured for aquaculture purposes.

I think that through these steps, the PSARC paper, the advice and the mitigation measures we've introduced and the research that is ongoing in terms of harvesting impacts for intertidal…. It shows we have a broad approach to development in this industry. We've really taken our time, and we've done a very slow, phased approach.

I just wanted to make those opening comments, and I'll let Chris talk about his research.

C. Pearce: First of all, I'd like to thank the committee for allowing me to show up here today and present some of my research findings to date. It's sort of an ongoing process. We're still analyzing some of the results, still going out in the field and collecting some samples. It's an ongoing process, but I wanted to give you a quick update of what I've found so far.

Of course, this is the beast that we are looking at producing. These are adult geoduck clams that were produced on intertidal culture leases down in Washington State. Before I dive into the research end of things, I'd like to give you a brief introduction about the beast itself.

It's called the Pacific geoduck clam. The scientific name is Panopea abrupta. It's a bivalve mollusc — bivalve meaning it has two shells. It's closely related to oysters, scallops, other clam species. The average size is about 19½ centimetres in shell length and a one-kilogram wet weight, although they can get up to about 23 centimetres in shell length and almost nine kilograms in wet weight. So they can get quite big. It's actually the largest burrowing clam in the world, which is quite amazing. They're quite long-lived. The oldest individual on record to date is 168 years, so they're very long-lived.

On our coast they're found from central Alaska down to central California, and on the west coast of the Pacific, from Siberia down to Japan. They're also found in Panama. Of course, they're native to British Columbia, meaning they're not introduced, unlike Pacific oysters and Manila clams, which we also culture and which are introduced.

General habitat. They live in gravel, sand, silt, mud. They occur in the low intertidal down to a depth of a hundred metres or more. They're typically buried in the sediment to a depth of one metre. They're harvested with these high-pressure water jets or stingers. They need to use these in order to liquefy the sand in order to pull up the adult clams. You simply can't grab hold of the siphon and pull them out without liquefying the sediment first.

They are filter feeders, meaning they filter small particles out of the water column, so we're not adding any food to the system to feed the cultured clams.

They have separate sexes. Males and females are separate. Spawning typically occurs in the summer months. The eggs are fertilized in the water column,

and the larvae develop in the water column as well. Typically, it takes 40 to 50 days in order for the larvae to fully develop. Then they will land on the sea floor and metamorphose into the juvenile clam.

They can become reproductively mature as quickly as two to three years old, but I think they become 100-percent mature around seven or eight years old. They can recruit to the fishery as young as four years old.

As Andy pointed out, there are no known infectious diseases to date. This has been studied by Dr. Susan Bower at the Pacific Biological Station and partly funded by the Underwater Harvesters Association. That's not to mean that infectious diseases couldn't develop once we start full-scale commercial aquaculture, but to date she's looked at hundreds of clams, and there are no known infectious diseases.

A little bit about production and value. I think Al touched on this a bit. In 2005 the B.C. fishery was worth $32.7 million. They brought in 3.4 million pounds at an average price of $9.50 per pound. Washington State that same year brought in 4.6 million pounds for $21.2 million U.S. at $4.60 U.S. per pound.

That same year aquaculture production in Washington State, which was 100-percent intertidal production, brought in about 960,000 pounds. That's almost 20 percent of their total landings. I don't have the economic values for the aquaculture product, but it's probably around the same price — $4.60 per pound.

This is what intertidal culture looks like down in Washington State. It's done on a fairly large scale. They have, I think, over 1,000 hectares in production. They use PVC plastic tubing, which they insert into the sediment as predator protection. They put the pipes in the ground, then they put seed in the sediment within these pipes, they cover the pipes with mesh, and that protects the young seeds from various predators.

This shows the extraction process in the intertidal. You can see the fellow on the left there. He's almost waist-deep in sediment. He's using the high-powered water jet or stinger to liquefy the sediment and pull up the clams. It's a fairly disruptive process. You're liquefying the sediment down to a depth of a metre or more.

Before I go on to summarize some of my own work, I wanted to give the committee a brief overview of what has already been done out there in regards to looking at the potential impacts of geoduck culture and harvesting on the environment. There are a few studies that have been reported.

Goodwin, 1978. He compared unharvested and harvested plots — small plots, three by 30 metres. He took sample cores in both plots prior to harvest and then after harvesting. He found that harvesting the clams did not significantly affect the sediment grain size in the plot as a whole, but when he looked at the harvest holes themselves — where they've actually stung out the clams — he found that the harvesting significantly decreased the percentage of fine- and coarse-grained sediments.

He found that harvest had little or no effect on larger benthic organisms or organisms in the sediment, but harvest affected numbers and weights of small organisms between one millimetre and 3.65 millimetres in size. However, he hypothesized that the effects would be short-lived and probably not evident after a year or two, although he didn't actually prove this; he just hypothesized it.

He found that the average hole size was approximately 0.3 cubic feet. After four days these holes filled in considerably, and also the disturbed depth decreased in this time period. And he found that the holes completely filled in after approximately seven months.

Another study, conducted by some DFO scientists in 1983 and available as a Canadian technical report of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, compared three different plots: an unharvested plot, a plot from which all geoducks had been removed two years previously, and a plot totally harvested half a year prior to sampling.

They found that there was no significant difference amongst the three plots in terms of sediment grain-size distribution. They found that some of the infaunal species — infaunal being organisms living in the sediment — decreased while others increased due to harvesting, and there was no simple relationship. They actually found that species diversity was highest in the most recently disturbed plot and lowest in the undisturbed plot, which is an interesting finding.

One more study that I want to review is a private consultant company report. Ebasco Environmental did a study in 1992, which they submitted to the state of Washington Department of Natural Resources. They examined previously published research — basically, the two studies that I just overviewed: Goodwin, and Breen and Shields.

They also went out and conducted some field experiments, and they modelled sediment plume transport. What they did was go out and harvest clams in the subtidal with these high-powered water jets or stingers. They tracked the sediment plume in the water column, which was generated by the suspended sediments that were kicked up when they liquefied the sediment.

Their overall conclusion was that the transport and fate of suspended sediment associated with commercial geoduck harvesting would have minimal impacts on the physical environment in the harvest tract and adjacent areas. So that sums up, basically, the research that's been done in the past on looking at the effects of geoduck aquaculture and harvesting on the benthic environment.

Now I want to move into some of the research that I've been conducting in the last two years. As I said before, it's a work in progress. We haven't finished yet, but I want to give you an update on where we are to date.

We have two experiments running: one in the intertidal and one in the subtidal. They basically have the same three objectives. One is to assess the effect of different forms of predator protection on survivorship and growth of juvenile clams. I won't be presenting any

of this research today, because it doesn't really bear on the environmental impact issues. It's more of a production issue.

We are looking at assessing the potential effects of geoduck culture on the benthic environment. We're also looking at assessing the potential effects of harvesting the clams on the benthic environment.

A little bit about our progress to date. The intertidal experiment. We harvested the clams last July, after one year of grow-out. We've completed all the field sampling. We are still going through some of our sample processing now. We went out and did some benthic sampling immediately after harvesting, then at four and six months after harvesting. We still have some of those samples to process.

The subtidal experiment, we're still running. We will be harvesting those clams this month. The field sampling after harvest will continue on into the summer of 2007, and we hope to have all the sample processing done by the fall of 2007.

I want to talk a little bit about the intertidal study. I won't be presenting any of the results of the subtidal study today. We're still analyzing a lot of the samples. But I will focus in on the intertidal study. We're running that at the head of Nanoose Bay. It's an intertidal plot at about 0.5 metre chart datum — fairly low in the intertidal. It's a relatively small plot size — 20 by three metres.

We're using the PVC tube–protection methodology that they use down in Washington State, as I showed you earlier in those figures. We're looking at three different factors. We're looking at the effect of tube diameter, tube length and the size of the mesh screen covering these tubes.

We have eight experimental treatments in total, with 30 replicates per treatment. So we have 240 tubes in total in the ground. This is what our experimental research plot looks like in Nanoose. You can see all the PVC tubes buried in the sediment.

We seeded out the juvenile clams at about 20 millimetres to 60 millimetres shell length in July 2005 after having measured individual shell length and wet weights. We planted two seeds per tube. Again, they were planted at 0.5-metre tidal height. Then we went back a year later, in July 2006. We harvested the clams and we assessed growth and survivorship.

Now, I should point out that typically, you wouldn't harvest within a year of outplanting. It would take five, six, seven years. We didn't have that amount of time or money to conduct the experiment that long. So we harvested the clams after a year, and we harvested the sediment to a depth as if they were adult clams. We harvested down to a depth of approximately a metre, even though we didn't need to go that deep to get these juvenile clams out.

We are also looking at assessing impacts on benthic environment. How are we doing that? We took benthic sediment samples before placing anything out in the field. Before putting any of the clams out, any of the tubes, we took sediment samples to determine various things, including sediment grain size; the amount of organic material in the sediment, or percent organics; the concentration of sulphide in the sediment; ORP, which is oxidation reduction potential; TOC and TN, which are total organic carbon and total nitrogen; and infaunal diversity. These are typical measures that you would look for when you are going out and trying to assess environmental impacts on a sedimentary environment.

After having planted out the clams, we then went back immediately after outplanting and took further sediment samples. We also collected samples at four, six, ten and 12 months after planting out the clams. Then we extracted the clams with a high-powered water jet or stinger. We took sediment samples immediately after harvesting those clams, then we went back four and six months after harvesting and took further samples.

At each one of those time points we took samples within the culture plot, so where the clams were seeded — that three-by-20-metre area — and also at varying distances from that plot — five, ten, 25 and 50 metres distance from that plot along three separate transects. We had one transect running parallel to the shoreline at the same tidal height as the plot. We had another transect running perpendicular to the shoreline towards the ocean, and another transect running perpendicular to the shoreline towards the beach.

The next two slides are going to be summary slides. I'm not going to present any figures. I didn't want to bog down the committee with a lot of bar graphs and line graphs and bore you. Basically, I wanted to give you the bottom line of what we have found with the intertidal study.

There is a lot of stuff here, so I'll take it slowly. If you look along the left-hand side, the white letters there, those are the various variables that we measured — percent organics, concentration of sulphide at two centimetres, concentration of sulphide at four centimetres and so on. The next two columns, the blue columns, are comparing pre-seed samples versus post-seed samples, so before we put the clams out versus after. Then the two yellow columns are comparing preharvest versus post-harvest.

Now, NS signifies non-significant. So when you see that, there was no significant effect of either the seeding process or the harvest process. When you see an "S," that means a significant effect.

We saw significant reduction in the concentration of sulphides at both two- and four- centimetre depth in pre-seed versus post-seed samples. The other point I should make here is that the first blue column is the zero-metre column. That's data collected from within the seeded plot, and then the second column, the zero-to-50-metre column, is data collected from the research plot as a whole. That includes all those sample points along the 50-metre transects that we took.

There was a significant reduction in sulphide concentration within the seeded plot and for the whole research plot, looking at pre-seed versus post-seed

samples. We had a significant reduction in percent of organics in the preharvest versus post-harvest samples.

But I should point out that those post-harvest samples were immediately after stinging out the clams. We haven't looked at the four- and the six-month post-harvest samples yet, so we could be getting back to normal conditions once we look at the four- and six-month samples.

The only other significant changes were with the oxidation reduction potential. We had a significant reduction looking at preharvest versus post-harvest samples. But we didn't actually see this in the seeded plot. This was in the whole research plot. So I'm not sure that's an actual effect of harvesting the clams per se. It may actually be an effect of season or time.

This slide shows more summary. We're looking at grain sizes now, so along the left-hand side you see various grain-size fractions running from greater than two millimetres to less than 45 microns. They're going from coarse to fine. Very few changes here. No changes whatsoever upon seeding the clams out. There were a few changes going from preharvest to post-harvest, a significant reduction in the amount of core sediments greater than two millimetres in grain size and a significant increase in the fines — 125 to 250 microns, 63 to 125 microns, and 45 to 63 in micron size fractions.

That's to be expected because when you're stinging out the clams, you are liquefying the sediment down to a depth of one metre. The fines are coming to the surface, and some of the heavier particles are sinking. So that's why you see significant reduction in the core sediments and an increase in the fines. Again, this is looking at samples taken immediately post-harvest. So they may go back to background levels when we check the four- and the six-month post-harvest samples.

What is there to conclude from all this? Well, based on the published reports that I have reviewed for you and the current DFO research that I'm conducting, it seems that geoduck culture and harvesting appear to have relatively minimal effects on the benthic environment. Any impacts that do occur are restricted basically to near-field or near to the harvest plot and are typically short-lived.

What do we need to do in the future? Well, I think we need to conduct more research on potential impacts on nearby sensitive habitat, like eelgrass and kelp beds. Nobody has looked at this yet.

I think we want to be careful and monitor the potential impact of commercial-scale aquaculture development. What we've been doing in the past — what these studies that I have reviewed for you have done — is conducting research on typically smaller-scale plots, not really commercial sized. So we do want to be careful and monitor potential impact of larger harvesting practices.

I just want to end briefly by thanking my funding sources for this research: Fisheries and Oceans Canada; the aquaculture collaborative research and development project, ACRDP; B.C. Ministry of Agriculture and Lands; and our industrial sponsor, Manatee Holdings Ltd.

R. Austin (Chair): I believe we're going to be losing a couple of members for House duties. I'm going to open the floor for questions so they can have an opportunity to ask their questions before they have to leave.

Also, my understanding is that there's quite a difference between intertidal geoduck production and subtidal. So I think it will be interesting just to have a break here, because most of your research is about intertidal, but I understand from the first presentation from Al that the new industry or the commercialization is really subtidal.

Anyway, Dan has a question. I think he might have to leave, so why don't you start with Dan.

D. Jarvis: Actually, I've got a couple that run together. I just wondered, sir, if your seeded areas are treated in any way differently from what the wild would be, prior to being seeded.

You mentioned about fallowing. Why would you have to fallow if there's no difference between the seeded and the wild? The wild certainly aren't fallowed — or do they have a natural fallowing? I'm not following.

D. Jarvis: I thought you mentioned…. Maybe it was Al that mentioned something about fallow.

D. Jarvis: He mentioned purging. Maybe the purging is what I got confused with.

Then in that study done in '78…. You've mentioned the hypothesis had not been proved. Is anyone trying to prove it now or doing any experimental work on it?

I am actually doing research in the subtidal as well. That project is ongoing. We will be harvesting the clams this month. It's basically running the same as the intertidal project that I just reviewed for you — very similar. Different predator protection techniques, but similar sampling in terms of going out and collecting sediments.

I will have data on subtidal harvesting as well within, probably, half to three-quarters of a year.

D. Jarvis: Quickly, what happened to the Clayoquot area that you seeded? Is it still there being allowed to

D. Jarvis: Oh, I thought somehow…. I don't know how I got Clayoquot in there. Someone…. Al, did you say that?

A. Castledine: At the beginning of my talk I referred to two outplants that DFO had made. One of them was in Clayoquot, I think.

D. Jarvis: Well, do you know if it's still operating or if it's just left to go…?

G. Robertson: First off, a question. The committee has had a number of submissions expressing concerns about the pace of this development. In particular, the sense that's out there is that there is no independent peer-reviewed research done on subtidal geoduck aquaculture. Can you confirm that?

C. Pearce: Well, I would say the Breen and Shields study and the Goodwin study that I overviewed…. They were both conducted in the subtidal and both peer-reviewed. So there are those two papers.

G. Robertson: Were those papers related to geoduck aquaculture or just a wild harvest?

C. Pearce: Wild harvest. But the harvesting of wild clams would be very similar to the harvest of aquacultured clams.

G. Robertson: But in terms of the impact of large-scale…. You mentioned at the end that the research you've been doing is on small-scale plots and that the potential impact of industrial scale has not been looked at by peer-reviewed research.

C. Pearce: That is correct, yes. The Goodwin study was done on plots similar in size to what I'm working on. The Breen and Shields study…. I don't think they mentioned the size of the plots, so they could have been bigger. I don't know. I'm not aware of any real commercial-scale work that's….

A. Thomson: I'd just like to interject. The PSARC process is a peer-review process. The findings of the paper are presented at an open meeting that has both departmental scientists, but also external academics as well, attending. It's actually an open-forum peer review in which criticisms are given of the paper, and the paper is sent back for revisions before being accepted as a final paper.

A. Thomson: It's published on the Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat website and is available from the authors that way. It's not published in a journal, but it's published through the CSAS process.

A. Thomson: The publication is, but the peer review can include external scientists. The public meeting at which it's presented can have representatives from the industry, from first nations and from other areas as well. I don't know who was present at this particular meeting, but I could probably find out.

G. Robertson: Okay. I've had a look at that paper, and what struck me was that there were many references to not enough information throughout and that there were potential impacts including reduced genetic fitness, yet this has not been directly assessed. "Negative impacts on populations may be slow to detect…. It remains to be shown, however, that juveniles from one region are not carriers of disease for clams in other regions, nor whether disease issues might arise in the higher densities likely to be found in geoduck farms."

The paper seemed to be full of a lot of uncertainty and a lot of questions, which contradicts pursuing large-scale aquaculture at this point. It doesn't look like there's a lot of peace of mind from this paper. There are a lot of questions asked.

A. Thomson: Actually, if I can respond to that, that's exactly the point of the paper: to identify potential impacts. That's exactly why we had the paper authored. What we've done since then — I mean, the paper was in 2004 — is develop mitigation strategies to address those. In terms of genetic fitness, we require genetic samples to be taken of the individuals we had planted out, to look for changes in the population structure of the individuals being planted out.

In terms of disease monitoring, we have a disease-monitoring program built into the IDC component. As well, we're restricting the area of the harvest or planting to the Strait of Georgia, which is one of our shellfish disease zones. So you'd only have individuals going back in that same zone. It's a way of mitigation against spreading a potential disease, should there be any one actually found around the province.

That's the exact point of this CSAS paper: to develop potential impacts, and then to allow government management, both federally and provincially, to develop a mitigating strategy to address them.

G. Robertson: This may be a question for Dr. Pearce. It sounds like the stage is set for these questions to be answered by further development of the industry. The question would be: is licensing 950-odd acres of seabed for geoduck farming…? Do you consider that a

precautionary approach to pursuing the next step of looking at geoduck aquaculture in the wild?

C. Pearce: I would, yes. Those sites were carefully chosen by consultation with Underwater Harvesters Association, first nations, the province and DFO. It really is a phased approach. In my mind it's taking it slowly and cautiously, yes. As Andy mentioned, we're restricting culture leases to the Strait of Georgia. We know that the clams within that zone are basically of all one genetic stock. We will only be taking broodstock from that area, planting out the seed to the same area. I think it's a cautious approach.

G. Robertson: One last question for Mr. Castledine. You mentioned, on the chain of custody…. I think your sentence was: "We think we figured out the chain of custody." Is that as certain as we can be about that?

A. Castledine: What I was referring to there was my familiarity with it. I know that a year and a half ago I was engaged in discussions on how to achieve a chain of custody that would satisfy our requirements, DFO requirements, and the Underwater Harvesters Association.

Again, I was reflecting today my ignorance of exactly how it is working, but there are logbooks that are required for harvesting. The animals have to be offloaded only at designated ports. We have had some of our enforcement staff meet those. They're loaded on trucks, the trucks are sealed, and then they go to the processing plant. All of that is an attempt to make sure that wild geoduck can't be added to the load on the way.

Now, there may be some people who say it's inadequate. I was just having a chat with one of the underwater harvesters. He may not have as much confidence in that as I do, but I think it's a fairly rigorous approach. We only have the five areas that are currently being harvested, and our ministry is actively involved in that chain-of-custody process.

G. Robertson: There will be one last question for you. On these first proposed farmsites — are any of those ten applicants first nations?

A. Castledine: No. The answer is no. If I can elaborate a bit. Some first nations have expressed interest. It takes tremendous resources to get into this. We are trying to seek opportunities for first nations to get in, to have the opportunity.

In the past we've had something called memorandum-of-understanding sites, where the province has set aside certain areas for shellfish aquaculture — oyster, clam — in anticipation that a first nation may want access to those sites. A similar approach is currently being discussed so that they're not left out of this development.

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you. Four other members want to ask questions. I'm going to ask you to limit it to two so that we can hear the underwater harvesters prior to our time running out today.

C. Trevena: My question is for Mr. Castledine. It's about the process in finding the sites and approving the sites, the latest ones. You talk about recognizing the interests of first nations and proximity to first nations. I wondered what consultation you did with first nations in finding these sites.

A. Castledine: The proposed policy was sent out to the first nations in the areas where the opportunities were identified, and they were asked for comments and feedback. We heard from the Hul'qumi'num treaty group. When these sites actually went out and were identified, they were referred out to first nations — the specific sites — and their views were solicited. It was similar to how an oyster farm might be created. It would go out to the first nation for review prior to a decision being made. So there was contact with the first nations, yes.

C. Trevena: If I might clarify this. I don't want this to be my second question, but I might clarify it. So a letter went out to every first nations band. It was specifically going to be their territory that was going to be impacted by this. It was just a letter; there was no other move towards consultation?

A. Castledine: I wasn't involved, but when the letters go out, usually staff call to try to solicit a response. I could certainly find out more about that process if you wish.

The other part of the process you mentioned is consultation with communities. I know that in my own constituency there was consultation in two communities, but only when pressed. I wondered what sort of process…. This is a different approach that has been used by the ministries than has been used generally when a new aquaculture site, a finfish site, is being looked at. I wondered why you have changed the approach in this.

A. Castledine: The approach was generally the same as for a finfish aquaculture site in that there had to be open houses in the nearby communities. I understand there were two held.

But I must say, you bring up a valid point. Certainly, we will be taking more effort to engage communities prior to these decisions being made in future. We're currently getting ourselves organized to do that.

C. Trevena: One quick follow-up from that, if I might, Chair. The consultation that has happened with first nations and with communities on these ten sites — that's complete, as far as you're concerned, or you'll be going out again to talk to first nations and talk further with the communities on any moves that you're doing?

A. Castledine: I would suggest that the process is essentially complete for these ten sites. What I was looking at were future activities.

J. Yap: Your research shows, Dr. Pearce, that the benthic effects seem to be minimal. You also refer to a study by a Dr. Bower that shows there are no known infectious diseases associated with geoducks. How does this compare to other shellfish? And sort of related to this question, would it be fair to say that geoduck would be almost a perfect shellfish to harvest?

C. Pearce: Geoducks sort of differ from our other typical shellfish that we culture in B.C. in that they live in the sediment. Pacific oysters, Manila clams, Japanese scallops are typically reared via suspended culture techniques. You don't have that issue of having to dig up the sediment to get them, which is one of the big issues with geoduck wild harvest and aquaculture. You have to liquefy that sediment down to a depth of a metre or more. What is that doing to the benthic environment?

In that respect, geoducks are different. Geoducks are, I would say, a great species to culture. They are very valuable. They were $9.50 a pound in B.C. in 2005. That's a lot of money.

They typically occur in beds. In the wild they're typically aggregated, so they're used to living in high densities, which means they'll probably be amenable to high culture densities as well.

J. Yap: Yes. My follow-up question. You touched on the price. Why would there be a price difference between B.C. and Washington State?

C. Pearce: Good question. I noticed that when I was putting the talk together, and I didn't get a chance to get back to my Washington contact to ask him why. But it seems that Washington State clams are quite a bit lower in price than B.C. Perhaps Michelle or James or Bruce could answer that.

J. Austin: The Washington State fishery is managed completely differently than the Canadian-B.C. geoduck fishery. They have a bid system. They have 50-percent tribal involvement in the fishery.

There are a lot of players and a lot of confusion in the industry sometimes, and there seems to be difficulty in maintaining a high market price. They quite often get a lower price than we do. We have one industry that's contributing to the marketplace, and in Washington they have several. They do have some lower quality, and they have a track system where they have no choice; they have to fish in certain areas of the state. Sometimes those areas that are bid are low quality, and they have no choice. That might be an annual quota that might come up.

But the fisheries themselves are managed completely differently than ours in B.C. That, I would say, is a large contributing factor to the difference in price.

The aquaculture prices that Dr. Pearce was mentioning earlier — part of those prices were lower because they're a younger species, and they were smaller. They were taking a discount price so that they could sell it into the marketplace.

J. Yap: Okay. So we're not really comparing apples and apples, oranges and oranges.

J. Austin: Well, not with the wild fishery, and young aquaculture product is not really a similar product.

J. Yap: But with regard to the pricing, if for comparable quality Washington is selling for less and we're selling for more, then are we able to sell what we can produce? Is the demand there so that we can do that?

J. Austin: Currently we sell everything that we produce. There's no…. Not only do we sell…. We have it preordered before we even go fishing.

S. Fraser: Just quickly, a clarification on the research. You've cited the earlier Breen and the Goodwin reports back last millennium there. This was on harvesting technique and potential impact. The new stuff you're doing is specifically around, potentially, aquaculture of the product. That subtidal work isn't complete. Stop me if I'm wrong anywhere.

The intertidal is preliminary, and it's quite specific. It's been adapted, it's suggested, to time constraints. The grow-out time is long, so you've nailed it down to 12 months. You've tried to find ways to mitigate that. In the harvesting part of the study, you've gone down as deep as you can, but it's not a full grow-out. You haven't had any chance to do a repetitive harvesting — the potential impacts of that.

I mean, there are so many…. This hasn't been done yet. This is not finished yet. This is in one site that is 3 by 20 metres. And this is precautionary principle in opening up aquaculture. I'm having a problem with that. I can't reconcile that as being…. There are so many gaps here.

I guess I'm going to ask the question again, maybe just with that segue, of Dr. Pearce. You consider this precautionary? It seems like we're early days in the research.

C. Pearce: Well, as Al correctly pointed out, we've been doing the Fan study for 15 years now.

C. Pearce: So we have a lot of data built up. There are those other studies that I pointed out. Yes, I do admit that we haven't really looked at commercial-scale potential impact.

C. Pearce: Yeah. We do have a proposal in the works for funding. There is a proponent who wishes to harvest an intertidal lease this summer. It's a commercial-size lease, and he won't be able to harvest that unless we have some sort of research plan in place to assess potential impacts. So we are working on getting funding for that. If that comes through, then we will be studying that this coming year.

I do understand your concern. Looking at my research, it's strictly a 3-by-20-metre plot of land. It's the same with the Goodwin study. The Breen study — I'm not sure. They didn't report on what plot sizes.

A. Castledine: If I could make a comment. The areas we're talking about sound substantial, but not all of that area is suitable for actually planting geoduck. The other thing is that there is a really significant deficit of seed supply, which is going to slow things down dramatically. I'm not even sure that the Fan tenures are being fully exploited yet.

The other thing is that the harvest techniques, at least, are identical to what happens in the wild fishery. I'm fairly confident that parts of the harvested areas in the wild fishery are comparable in density to what you might find in an aquaculture tenure. I'm not saying that the whole area would be, but there would be spots in a harvest area that are similar to the density.

We're on a fairly slow road here. There isn't enough seed available currently to satisfy the tenures, although an opportunity will then drive hatchery production. I think, without pressing too much, perhaps the Underwater Harvesters presentation might actually be helpful in terms of looking at the wild fishery, how it's prosecuted and how similar some of these activities are for aquaculture.

S. Fraser: I appreciate that, although I wanted to talk to Dr. Pearce about his work and where I thought gaps were.

The second question, very quickly. The disease issues that John had brought up earlier. Again, the work that's been done — I haven't read it, but you've cited the work of Dr…. I forget her name now.

S. Fraser: Thank you, yes. And there are no known diseases. Again, we're opening up a new industry at a commercial level. Oysters — it's agreed that they're free-hanging in a lot of cases. Denman disease — things like this have occurred and have more frequency with the onset of the farms. So there are potential diseases with shellfish, with bivalves that are very similar, as was pointed out, to creatures maybe not quite as big.

Has there been work done on diseases associated with the farms in these waters? Is there potential for…? I mean, these are the indigenous species, so you're bringing in…. You've got a disease that happens with an oyster. Well, okay, but where's it going to go? It will go maybe within the industry. I don't know the comparable species there, but there is wild stock here. That's the concern: protecting the wild.

When we have this level of farming, I know density is high where they exist in the wild, but there's contact. Physical contact occurs. There are things that happen that are different than in the wild. Have they yet been studied as far as potential for disease transfer and/or development of disease?

C. Pearce: Not to my knowledge, no. That study conducted by Dr. Bower was done with wild clams. Correct, James?

C. Pearce: So nothing has been done on aquaculture product. Correct me if I'm wrong. Nothing was done with Fan?

B. Clapp: Bruce Clapp. I work for the Underwater Harvesters Association. I also previously worked for the biological station in Nanaimo so I am privy to some of these other studies.

When Susan was doing the work on the disease, we gave her every and all kinds of types of weird geoduck we could find from aquaculture product. This was enhanced product that we had come from the hatchery. We also provided her with quite a number of juveniles. She tried to do disease transfer to the juveniles and was unsuccessful as well. So it is an aquaculture product, but it is also wild because they were spawned from wild stock.

G. Coons: I also have a concern of precautionary principle in relying on data and science from 25 and 30 years ago. My question is: when taking the cautionary approach, is this following the intent of the precautionary principle as followed in other fisheries, or is aquaculture on an equal footing with our wild stocks as far as the precautionary principle is concerned?

C. Pearce: I'm going to hand that off to Andy. Can you handle that one, Andy?

A. Thomson: Yeah. Certainly in the application of the precautionary principle, as was the direction from cabinet, we apply it equally to both fisheries and to aquaculture. There are no special cases for aquaculture management over fisheries.

G. Coons: One last comment, just a comment. And I guess that's why there is a concern here about using the precautionary principle. DFO provides precautionary advice, I think, on siting and issues dealing with peer-reviewed science. Is that correct?

R. Austin (Chair): Thank you very much. Now we'll hear from the Underwater Harvesters Association. It'll just take a couple of minutes to set up for their presentation.

Okay. Now that we're all set up, I'm going to call the meeting back into order. Please, the floor is yours.

M. James: My name's Michelle James, and I'm executive director of the Underwater Harvesters Association. With me, you've already met James Austin — he's our president — and Bruce Clapp. He's our operations manager for our enhancement and aquaculture program.

I've also handed out some information, which you can look at later. But right now I think it's important for you to actually see this video because what it shows is harvesting the way it actually looks underwater and things like that.

I think it might answer a lot of questions you might have. There are copies of this in a DVD in your package, but I just thought it might be worthwhile to show that now.

M. James: I just wanted to talk a little bit and show you a few pictures. This is the historic geoduck landings and value in British Columbia. You can see that the landings were very high at one point, and the value was very low. Landings came down, but as the market developed in China, the total value of the fishery has gone up.

This is global geoduck production by region. The red is British Columbia. The yellow is Washington State. The baby blue is Alaska, and then you can see the Washington State aquaculture. We've seen quite an increase in production in the last few years, as you can see there by that graph. We expect Washington State to be at about 1.5 million pounds of aquaculture production within the next couple of years with what they have on the ground right now.

This is the historic landed price per pound in British Columbia. When the fishery first started, fishermen were getting about seven cents a pound for this stuff. If you used to travel B.C. Ferries back in the late '70s, early '80s, you would have had geoduck in your clam chowder. That is what it was used for a lot. Since we've developed the Chinese market, the value has gone up quite strongly.

I thought I'd show you just a few pictures of our seeding program. As you would have heard in the video, we have an enhancement program in British Columbia. This is our barge that we jointly operate with Fan Seafoods as a geoduck hatchery. It's up at Middle Point, just north of Campbell River. The hatchery is totally contained in that light green barge building. This is just a schematic of kind of what the hatchery looks like.

That's inside the hatchery. This is the algal room — all sorts of different algae to feed the babies. Downwellers in the hatchery.

This is Dr. Abayomi Alabi, and Yomi is with Seed Science. We have contracted with Seed Science to run the hatchery. He's a world-renowned expert on shellfish culture.

This is broodstock in the hatchery. We're required to get 200 new broodstock every year — and they have to come from the same location that they're going to be planted back into — and get 50 each from various locations to total 200. It has to be done every year to maintain genetic diversity.

That's actually a picture of a geoduck spawning in the wild. It's actual spawn coming out. They're broadcast spawners, so it's coming out of one of its siphons. These are our geoduck larvae. These are tiny baby geoducks in a downweller.

This is not a very good picture, but those little things you see sticking up are geoduck necks. These are our geoducks with a shell length of about five millimetres — very tiny — and they've just been sprinkled into this sand. You can see their necks are already sticking up. They're burying themselves in the sand. There is another picture of geoduck seed — much larger size seed.

That's our vessel. That's the Tony I. You can see Bruce standing on the back deck there. That's the vessel from which all of our seeding operations take place. That's just a picture of our planting machine.

These are the areas where we've planted geoducks for the purposes of enhancement. We've been enhancing the wild geoduck populations since 1995. These are our geoducks that were planted in 1997 and sampled in 2006 from Icarus Point. So you can see that it takes a long time for them to grow. They're a pretty good size, but they're not exactly huge. These ones are a bit bigger.

That's Jamie on the left, and I'm not sure who that is on the right. This is again sampling of geoducks planted in 1997 and sampled in 2006 from the Texada Island area.

We decided to get into aquaculture ourselves as a non-profit society, and that is our tenure location off of Hernando Island.

A. Horning: I just want to…. "Gooey-duck." I pronounced it geoduck, but how do you get gooey-duck

from there? How would you order it in a restaurant and things of that nature? It doesn't make any sense to come up with gooey-duck out of that. Is there a magic to why it's gooey-duck?

M. James: It was actually originally gwe-duk, which means "dig deep" in Nisqually. It sort of got changed into geoduck by some anthropologist who decided they just had to spell it some way that people could read it. In fact, there was a mistake made in a dictionary a very long time ago, which stuck. It was actually supposed to be "goe." It ended up "geo." So that was an absolute typo that has lasted forever.

If you want to order it somewhere around here, you'd probably best go to a sushi bar, and it's called mirugai in sushi-speak, in Japanese. Or you can go to a high-end Chinese restaurant, such as the Sun Sui Wah in Vancouver, and order geoduck. In Chinese it's called shimbaba, which means elephant trunk clam, which I think is far more descriptive and a better name. Thank goodness we're trying to sell most of these in China, where it's called elephant trunk clam, and they know exactly what we're talking about.

C. Trevena: A question about the seeding and the harvesting. I mean, in the video you showed us, it looks relatively benign. You've got a guy there underwater, and he's there with his hose pumping up the geoducks.

We're talking geoduck farming, aquaculture. There will be more than just looking for the geoduck. You'll know where they are. I want to know what physical way you go about seeding, the physical way that it will be harvested by how many people in one tenure and what time frame you're talking about both for the seeding and for the harvesting.

B. Clapp: I'll start with the planting. Basically, you saw part of the machine. It's in the video there. We've modified it from that, and we're planting the seed at a smaller size right now. We cover it with a protective mesh, which is part of what you have in your handout. Our machine winches itself along the bottom, and it takes this plastic and puts it in like a U. It's buried three inches on either side into the sand. Our little, tiny baby geoducks are sprinkled on the inside of this canopy. That's to protect it from the predators.

The planting takes anywhere…. Depending on whether you can plant with that machine, we can plant between 25,000 and 50,000 geoducks a day. We're looking at waiting ten years before harvest. What we're planting is at medium or even low densities compared to some of what you see in the wild. In the wild there are areas where you'll find geoducks in more than 30 per square metre. We're not planting that high at our enhancement sites.

The harvest is exactly the same for a wild geoduck as an aquaculture geoduck. Once they're planted, nothing else happens to the geoduck. It's essentially a wild geoduck after that. It digs in just the way it would normally, and there's no other intervention or handling of the animal until it's harvested.

C. Trevena: And when it's harvested, it's somebody going along the ocean floor….

B. Clapp: It's harvested exactly the same way as the wild geoducks are. Each siphon is grabbed by the diver, the area around it is liquefied, and it goes into his bag.

The areas that you're seeing on the intertidal shots — they're harvested in a different manner. They're not going after each geoduck individually. In Washington State they wade in waist-deep and just liquefy the whole sediment in front of them, and the geoducks pop up because they're doing it out of the water, not in the water.

The sand is also very different on an intertidal beach than in a subtidal area. Sand gets to be a lot more packed, dense. It's a very different composition intertidally than subtidally, so there are a lot of differences in the intertidal harvesting, but subtidally, aquaculture product is harvested identically to wild product.

J. Austin: Can I add to that? I was just going to point out, in addition to what Bruce was saying, that — because of seed and cost constraints — any tenure, regardless of the size, probably wouldn't be planted any more than about 10 percent a year. People have a business plan based on being able to harvest so much every year when they're mature, which is a ten-year process, as Bruce pointed out.

So on any site that's awarded — say it's 30 acres — maybe 10 percent of that would be planted in one year. There wouldn't be these massive vessel operations. I would just say that there's no surface infrastructure. When a seeding operation is done, you don't see anything. It's all on the bottom. Besides an annual ongoing maintenance program that comes and makes sure that the protective covers are in place, there's nothing going on.

C. Trevena: Just a quick follow-up on the protected covers. It is like this: how do you make sure they stay in place?

B. Clapp: We have rebar staples that we've used in the past. Now, even that didn't keep them on the bottom this winter. We've had other areas where we haven't lost a single…. We've put down 150 rows of Vexar, and we never lost a single row — not once. This winter has been the exception. We have lost a lot. But we are working at different ways of anchoring it to the bottom as well. The mesh stays down for about two years, and then it's removed and reused.

G. Robertson: A couple of questions about this pre-seeding fishery. I'm not quite clear on how the money flows. My understanding is that in terms of the value of that catch, it's intended to only go — and maybe this is a better question for Mr. Castledine — to a non-profit or a research organization, and it's intended to compensate for the wild commercial fishery and the loss of that harvestable catch. Can you clarify that?

A. Thomson: I'll take it. It's a federal policy on access. The intent of the policy is to provide some compensation to commercial harvesters that are now being excluded from a tenure, an area that they were previously able to fish. Through the access policy, we allow what's called a pre-seed harvest to occur, where a number of those individuals are removed, the profits of which are being given by decision. The first priority is to research organizations that have an interest in improving the commercial harvest or knowledge around the commercial harvest, so that some benefit is accrued to the harvesters that are being excluded from that area.

G. Robertson: So in the case of the ten sites that are in phase 1 here, is it already identified where the money from that harvest will go?

A. Thomson: No, we haven't had any pre-seed harvest as of yet, to the best of my knowledge. There have been some questions around…. In the case where commercial fishermen may have an interest in a particular site or are also the tenure holders, which is the case with the Underwater Harvesters Association, we would not allow them to be the harvesters. That would be a conflict. We would seek out another party to do the pre-seed harvest in that case.

G. Robertson: Are there other parties here on this coast, other than the Underwater Harvesters?

A. Thomson: Well, potentially, there's the Centre for Shellfish Research, which is based in Nanaimo, or other parties like that could be sought out to do it.

A. Thomson: Well, to benefit in the sense that they would receive dollars that would go towards research surrounding commercial geoduck harvesting or aquaculture development.

G. Robertson: And in terms of the harvest itself, would the Underwater Harvesters still do that pre-seeding harvest?

A. Thomson: Well, the UHA itself wouldn't do the pre-seed harvest on site so they held the tenure — no. But they could potentially do it on site so that other people held the tenure on it — yes.

M. James: But the harvest still has to be done by a G-licensed vessel. It has to be done by a commercial fishing vessel. They may not get the proceeds from that, but it actually has to be done by a G-licensed vessel, to my understanding.

J. Austin: The actual physical harvesting of the product itself is done by an experienced diver who understands the process. It's a long process to learn how to do the work, so that's done by experienced guys only.

G. Robertson: Yeah. My concern is just the optics of it for the industry and to the public as to how the government is overseeing a public resource. Are all of the G licences or the harvesters currently active in geoducks members of the UHA?

G. Robertson: Are the applicants on the ten initial farms all UHA members, or is that a mix? The UHA is one of the ten.

A. Castledine: It's a mixture. I believe Fan Seafood, which has some of the other sites, is in the mix and others. I think, if I can interpret here, that certainly the UHA members could harvest these sites. But it would be done on a fee-for-service basis with any profit from those geoducks going to a research organization.

In the past some of the pre-seeding has gone to the UHA research organization because of their long-term interest in the wild fishery and its health. But what Andrew was getting at is if it were a UHA aquaculture site, a member of theirs could potentially harvest that on a fee-for-service, but the profits would go to a second-party research organization. Andrew mentioned the Centre for Shellfish Research as perhaps being one of those. So in a way, the UHA could benefit by doing the labour, but they wouldn't get the profit from those geoducks.

G. Robertson: For example, the other nine sites that are not UHA. The one that's been issued is a UHA farmsite. Is that correct? But the profits from the other nine could potentially go to the UHA's research non-profit conceivably? I'm just concerned that it looks like it's all in the family. From the outside it looks like, for better or for worse, the UHA is the only collective body benefiting from the development of geoduck aquaculture at this point, and that there isn't anything beyond that.

A. Thomson: I'd like to reiterate that the intent of the access policy is to provide benefit to commercial harvesters who are being excluded from that area. So yes, the UHA could potentially receive some funding for its research purposes, but that's the intent of the policy. It's to provide that benefit because that area is being excluded from commercial harvest.

J. Austin: In addition to that, the sites that were selected had been selected because they had low abun-

dance, not high abundance. We have done some cases in the past where we actually lost money doing the harvesting. There might not be any profit. There may be on some sites. On some sites it'll be a wash. There are some sites where we lost money. The stocks are low on the sites that have been selected for these aquaculture tenures.

G. Robertson: On all ten of those? My understanding from submissions to the committee was that a couple of them were actually quite significant in terms of biomass of wild geoducks. That was one of the concerns raised — that there was a lot of value there. I think it was Cortes.

M. James: I think there are two things to know here. One is that estimates of biomass are made by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They try to be as accurate as they can, but they can be wrong.

I guess the other thing is that when you go in and try to harvest an area, it's actually physically impossible to harvest all the geoducks in it. Maybe you could talk to that, Bruce.

B. Clapp: I believe most of those ten areas were just surveyed in 2004 and 2005. The surveys came back with very low abundance in those areas. That's why they were picked for aquaculture tenures.

J. Austin: In the past, before some of these criteria were set out when there was an experimental process in place, there was one site selected in particular, which had a surprising number of stocks on it. We had objected to the site, but it was approved. Anyway, there was a higher-than-anticipated stock on that site. That may be what you're referring to.

G. Robertson: Yeah, my recollection — I don't have the papers in front of me — was that there were a couple in the ten that had big numbers of biomass. That's what was pointed out to us. It looked like — basically, from the perspectives of these submissions — it was a licence to harvest the rest of those beds in one fell swoop and then go and do this aquaculture project.

A. Castledine: There was a table produced on historical landings from 12 sites, I believe, of which these ten were part. Certainly, some of those showed some fairly high historical landings. But as Bruce mentioned, I believe there are very low levels of geoduck on those ten now. Now, there may have been some confusion between that table and your impression.

G. Robertson: One last question. I wasn't aware that there was a number…. From your overhead it looked like there were roughly 14 enhancement sites. I was counting them on the fly. Are these very similar to what is proposed for geoduck aquaculture? Are these in effect a precursor to what's on the table now?

B. Clapp: No. Most of those sites are very small. They'll be one or two plots being 60 by 100 metres. When we first started geoduck enhancement, we weren't sure what the growth rates were going to be in different areas, so we wanted to try a great variety of areas around the Strait of Georgia to look at growth and survival.

It's very costly to produce geoduck seed and plant it and maintain it. We wanted to make sure we were going to plant it in the best areas to get the best returns for the enhancement. That's why we've planted in a large number areas — to look at the different survival and growth in these various areas.

J. Austin: Those sites are also not private tenures. They're enhanced back into the wild fishery. So the public right to fish still exists over those areas. Even though that's been put in with private dollars, it goes into the common property — versus a tenure, which is private. Those aren't tenures.

G. Robertson: Isn't the geoduck fishery essentially privatized — a closed fishery?

M. James: It's a limited-entry fishery. Pretty much 100 percent of the commercial fisheries in British Columbia are limited entry.

M. James: Limited entry means that there are a limited number of participants in a commercial fishery. If you wanted to come in, you'd have to get a licence from somebody who's already in. All commercial fisheries in British Columbia are limited entry at this point.

G. Robertson: Has there been any change or new entries into the geoduck fishery in recent years?

M. James: Most of our licence holders have been licence holders since the beginning. There is some change that happens now and again, but the vast majority have been in this business right from the start.

G. Robertson: If I may, one more question. Just remembering our meeting last Friday with the Sablefish Association, who in a quite similar situation in terms of limited entry and very carefully managing the wild resource, have almost the opposite approach here.

They're very concerned about sablefish aquaculture and the impact on the wild populations. A very high-value fishery, so it's odd on back-to-back days to have the wild industry completely opposed and very concerned about the impacts genetically and with disease transfer and then have, with geoducks, the opposite, where the industry are actually the proponents in looking at aquaculture as the next step.

M. James: One of the gentlemen to appear there was Tim Joys. He's actually a director of the UHA — different fishery, different situation, different biology, different dynamics. You can be very sure that if the UHA thought there was going to be any negative effect on the wild fishery of geoduck farming or enhancement, we'd be the first to say that.

These are the people who have the greatest investment in this business, and they don't want to lose that investment. They'd be the first ones out here complaining if they thought that was a potential.

G. Robertson: And the lack of research to date is not a concern — to validate it?

M. James: Bruce could speak to that. He has been involved in geoduck research for a very, very long time.

B. Clapp: I actually was with Fisheries when they tried some initial planting at Gabriola and Ritchie Bay. One of the reasons that geoduck is an ideal animal for aquaculture is because once you plant it, you don't do anything else. Essentially, once your animal reaches ten years old, a ten-year-old aquaculture geoduck is absolutely identical to a ten-year-old wild geoduck. There are no differences. They have been eating the same food. They have been living side by side in the same sand.

The UHA has always thought that you can do both. You can have aquaculture and a wild fishery side by side as long as you approach it in a conservative and appropriate manner, and the two aren't going to conflict with one another, as Michelle stated. We'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we didn't.

There has been a lot of research that doesn't show up. The UHA has been working with Dr. Alan Campbell at the biological station since 1990. There are quite a number of papers that have been published through that. It's in a similar genre to aquaculture, because Dr. Campbell had some of these areas intensively harvested much harder than they ever would in the wild, which would, I guess, in a way replicate what might happen on an aquaculture tenure.

They have been monitoring these sites every year since then, and that has been an ongoing comanagement project that the UHA has been involved with since then. Dr. Campbell used a bunch of other, different methods to try and look at planting geoducks and protecting them from predators. The UHA has been helping with that since 1990. So the UHA has been in on the ground floor since this started, working in conjunction with Fisheries, and they have seen what can happen from it. We're encouraged. That's why we're here.

J. Austin: Just to add to that, one of the concerns — and it's a justified concern — about the Sablefish Association is the growth rates. A mature black cod can be off to the market in about 18 months. If there is a huge impact into the aquaculture end of it, it's going to destroy their market, so I'd be concerned about that.

They are trying to address those issues. We, as Bruce pointed out, have been involved in the scientific end of the process from the very beginning. We are also, in anticipation of aquaculture, aggressively promoting product over in Asia. We're doing seafood shows. Michelle and I are going in May. We go to promotional dinners in China with the Canadian trade offices. The hopes would be to grow the market and increase the awareness of the product, because we know that in the future, aquaculture is going to increase the supply.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): In effect, if I understand this correctly, you reseed the areas that you have been harvesting and reseed up to 50 percent of what you harvested. Did I hear correctly?

M. James: The way we calculate that is we are harvesting about 3.5 million pounds. We seed about a million babies into the ground each year. That's our target.

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): The critical point of the question is the harvest areas, where you seed into the harvest areas. Is that correct?

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Then, essentially, over time it's really an ongoing mixed aquaculture and wild harvest. Is that correct? Is that a fair conclusion?

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): Yeah. I mean, you're very careful about the genetic origins. You can only reseed genetically what you harvested, so there's no question of mixing species or anything like that. In effect, what you've created in your harvest areas is an ongoing form of blended aquaculture plus wild harvest.

M. James: Some day, way into the future. Right now, because of the harvest rates and how much biomass there is B.C.-wide, the amount that's enhanced is…. We haven't actually harvested any enhanced product yet.

M. James: The first year will be this year. So over time, in the very distant future, yes, that would happen. I think I look at geoducks a lot like trees. You harvest trees. We do keep virgin stands of geoducks all

R. Cantelon (Deputy Chair): But of course, you're replanting much more carefully with regard to species than historically has been done in the forest industry, I suppose.

R. Austin (Chair): On behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank all of you for coming here and making a presentation today and for answering the questions of the committee members.

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Committee Staff:	Brant Felker (Committee Research Analyst)

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS (Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE

REPORT OF PROCEEDINGS
(Hansard)

SPECIAL COMMITTEE ON
SUSTAINABLE AQUACULTURE