Why Raymond Garland Believes Aquaculture Is Helping Shape The Future Of Places Like Shelburne
HALIFAX — Raymond Garland has spent one year of his life underwater – not all at once, of course, but over the course of a decade diving for family-owned Cooke Aquaculture. After a knee replacement, Garland traded in his flippers for a managerial position.
Garland is now site manager for Sandy Point, Hartz Point and Boston Rock, three ocean salmon farming sites in inner Shelburne.
“The main goal is caring for our fish,” said Garland. “If you’re not keeping the fish happy then you’re not doing a good job.”
At 7 am, the four-person crew starts feeding the fish. Right now, two of the farms are fed by boat and one is fed by a high-tech feed barge remotely from Bridgewater with the Bell Mobility wireless network.
“That’s a big help staff-wise,” said Garland. “Because we don’t actually have to feed these fish, we can work on our sites.”
In between feedings they do health checks on every fish, surface inspections, and weight samples. Garland checks his “aquaCurrent” app twelve to twenty times a day to see the temperature and oxygen levels of the water in the cages to ensure the salmon remain healthy.
The aquaCurrent app can be accessed anywhere using a smartphone or tablet, allowing sea farmers to access and analyze aquaculture site data from sensors in real-time. Halifax-based Innovasea created the app to enable fish farming to enter a new era. Innovasea is one of many local Nova Scotian companies that are a key part of the salmon farming supply chain.
Innovasea is taking environmental, biological and physical monitoring to new levels with advanced aquaculture intelligence solutions, which provide unparalleled real-time visibility into every aspect of salmon farming. Cooke Aquaculture is leading the way by embracing new tools and technologies to better understand its complex food production operations.
It keeps us going steady, every day there is something that we’re doing on these sites. I’ve been here for 16 years and we are always focused on various continuous improvement tasks. It’s an exciting and rewarding career,” said Garland.
Transitioning from diving to managing was an easy change for Garland because of his first-hand experience on the farm. Most of the divers he works with onsite were trained by Garland himself.
“The people that we have now, they are good people, and some of them moved here and brought their families,” said Garland.
All but one employee lives in Shelburne. One crew member moved from New Brunswick, and the rest are locals. From fueling boats, buying supplies at hardware stores and eating at restaurants, the crew spend a lot of time out in the community.
“We have a good working relationship with the community because we are actively involved in the community as well as generate a lot of revenue for local businesses,” said Garland.
Both the Town of Shelburne and The Municipality of the District of Shelburne embrace Cooke’s operations in the area and are supporting the companies growth to create more jobs, welcome newcomers and help address worker housing needs in collaboration with the provincial and federal government.
The salmon farm that Garland manages has been in production for more than thirty years. Over his sixteen years of working in aquaculture, Garland has seen some welcome changes.
“The changes in technology are incredible,” said Garland. “The leaps and bounds Cooke made in the years I’ve been here is truly impressive. We’ve advanced from feeding the fish by hand with a scoop to feeding fish in Shelburne Harbour farms by computer from Bridgewater.”
I’m sitting here looking at a bank of monitors now and I can see every one of my fish in cage 10 from underwater cameras,” said Garland. “I can zoom in on them, I can go around the cage, see if there are any problems with the cages.”
In addition to producing healthier fish, more accurate environmental monitoring, and a low carbon footprint due to reduced vessel trips and almost no feed waste, these changes in technology help keep Garland and his crew safe. In the past, if the weather turned quickly, feeding the fish could be dangerous aboard Cooke’s feed barges and marine vessels.
There is also a Cooke safety committee that meets monthly in Bridgewater where employees discuss any issues on the farms with management.
“Everybody is looking out for everybody else,” said Garland. “We all have our PPE and wearing life jackets is mandatory.”
Garland said that Cooke’s sites are closely monitored by the government but also by their own people. He often sees scientists out on the water doing aquaculture research and data collection.
“I can see aquaculture expanding quite a bit in Nova Scotia,” said Garland. “I think there’s room.”
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Growing up here as a fisherman, Garland would go by the harbour in the summer to find an empty wharf.
“Everyone was fishing,” said Garland. “Everyone was landing fish, that’s just not how it is anymore.”
Now when passing the wharf, Garland sees boats tied up. Garland sees the salmon farming industry as a way to supplement wild capture fisheries and help create jobs and prosperity in coastal communities in an environmentally sustainable way.
“Lobster fishing is great, we have that to rely on but many other fisheries are in decline,” said Garland. “If you don’t farm your fish, where are you going to get nutritious seafood to eat?”
This story was sponsored by Cooke Aquaculture.