Calls to have British Columbia's salmon farming industry move to a closed, shore-based system were revived yesterday while crews scrambled to respond to the latest "spill" of Atlantic salmon from an open net pen in Clayoquot Sound.
Mainstream Canada officials said thousands of Atlantic salmon escaped from an inner containment net but they weren't sure yet how many - if any at all - had made it past an outer barrier, known as a predator net.
"There is a definite possibility they could be out there," Alistair Haughton, deputy managing director of Mainstream Canada, said in a telephone call from Tofino.
Mr. Haughton said the spill occurred when a boat at the site began harvesting some 20,000 salmon from one of 10 pens at the farm. In the process, a containment net was torn and fish flooded through, although it is not known how many might have gone through the predator net into the open ocean.
He said about 5,000 salmon, each weighing about five kilograms, have been pulled out of the water so far between the pen and the outer predator net.
"On each pull they are getting 500 to 600 fish outside the containment net, but inside the predator net," Mr. Haughton said.
Meanwhile, boats from the nearby native village of Ahousat have responded to calls for help and have been setting gill nets in open waters around the salmon farm. Mr. Haughton said he didn't think any of the nets on the outside had caught any Atlantic salmon yet.
However, John Frank, deputy chief of the Ahousat band, said some Atlantic salmon have been caught in open water, but he didn't know how many.
"We should have a better handle on it by tomorrow," he said. "Meanwhile there are fishermen out there trying to scoop them up in nets and there are people using Buzz Bombs," he said, referring to a sports fishing lure that is jigged on a line.
"We want to do everything we can to get any fish that have escaped. It concerns us because of the environmental impact it could have on wild stocks."
Maryjka Mychajlowycz, a spokeswoman for the environmental group Friends of Clayoquot Sound, said the incident underscores the need for the government to force the salmon farming industry into a closed containment system, in which net pens at sea are replaced by tanks on land.
"This should be a wakeup call for the government," she said. "Even if not many escaped, it shows escapes are inevitable in an open net pen system."
She called on the government to implement the recommendations of a special legislative committee on fish farms, which earlier this year called for open net pens to be phased out.
Industry rejects the proposal, saying a closed containment system is too expensive.
Fish farms on the West Coast typically consist of a series of net pens, hung inside a larger predator net, in the open ocean.
But wind, waves, predators and industrial accidents can result in torn nets and escaped salmon.
Between 1991 and 2002 (the latest year for which statistics are available) more than 450,000 Atlantic salmon escaped from net pens in B.C.
"An unknown number of salmon have escaped this time," Ms. Mychajlowycz said. "We don't know yet if it's just a few, or a few thousand or what, but it's definitely a concern to us, especially at this time of year. Right now the bay is full of wild salmon that are congregating to go up spawning rivers and now they will be swimming through these Atlantics."
There are conflicting views over the risks escaped Atlantic salmon pose to wild stocks.
A Department of Fisheries and Oceans website on the issue states that there is "a low risk that Atlantic salmon could establish themselves in local waters and compete for food or habitat with local, more aggressive wild salmon."
But the David Suzuki Foundation warns that escaped farm salmon could infect wild stocks with disease and parasites, or they could migrate to salmon rivers and spawn.
Mark Hume