Closing in on environmentally sound salmon aquaculture

The provincial government and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada only provide aggregated data; an accurate description of the costs and benefits of the industry to the people and environment in British Columbia is nonexistent. [...] Rigorous financial and economic comparisons15 are needed to provide investors, government, industry, First Nations and other stakeholders with a transparent account of the full financial and economic costs of open net-pens and the economic potential of alternative salmon aquaculture technologies. [...] The report that follows reflects the findings of a qualitative review of the reports on these pilot projects to determine whether existing studies are sufficient to evaluate the economic potential of closed tank technologies for salmon aquaculture17,18,19. [...] The examination includes a determination of the degree to which these analyses accurately reflect actual operating conditions, gains in efficiency of operation from learning and experience, the consideration of economies of scale, and the societal benefits of improving the environmental performance of aquaculture operations in British Columbia. [...] Many input categories, like One of the key limitations of each report has been the labour or capital costs, do not presentation of all costs in dollars per total kilograms of fish vary with the quantity of fish produced ($/kg, found by dividing the total costs of the produced from a given number of operation by the weight of fish produced).