Follow Canada Investment Immigration and Life in Canada: The Namgis project, located on Vancouver Island, is North America's first commercial-scale land-based Atlantic salmon farm. The salmon raised there will be supplied to the market for the first time in March 2014. This closed-containment land-based salmon farming system is the result of a Canada aquaculture technology project, making the land-based farming and commercialization of salmon possible.
The traditional method of salmon farming involves hatching eggs in land-based hatcheries until they reach a certain size, then transferring them to floating net pens in coastal waters. However, this net-pen aquaculture cannot isolate the habitats of wild fish from farmed fish, making outbreaks of infectious diseases and parasites highly likely, which leads to the common use of antibiotics and pesticides. Although this closed-containment land-based salmon farming system is more expensive to build than net-pen farming, its overall production costs are comparable because it eliminates the need for antibiotics, pesticides, and vaccines. As an independent, land-based system, it can be established in any area with sufficient water sources, and its production cycle is 6 to 9 months shorter than that of net-pen farming. More importantly, this technology eliminates the use of antibiotics and pesticides, making it the most beneficial option for both the environment and humans. Although its retail price is 30% higher than that of market salmon, it has already been completely sold out via pre-orders.
The success of this technology is expected to enable the large-scale commercialization of land-based salmon farming.
