Aquaculture Technology Key To Restoring Wild Atlantic Salmon
SAINT JOHN – With the help of the world’s first wild salmon marine conservation farm, endangered Atlantic salmon are returning in record numbers to rivers in the Inner Bay of Fundy. Fundy National Park’s Resource Conservation team recently found over 100 salmon in park rivers, the highest number of returning salmon counted since 1989.
Joel Richardson, Cooke Aquaculture’s Vice President of Public Relations, says the goal of the marine conservation farm, founded in 2014 in Dark Harbour, Grand Manan, N.B., is to help save the wild inner Bay of Fundy Atlantic salmon from extinction and help regrow its population. Cooke supplied and installed the custom marine conservation farm and is the daily caretaker of the wild salmon through feed and nutrition, health monitoring and equipment maintenance.
The biologists from Fundy Salmon Recovery collect juvenile wild Atlantic salmon from their native rivers of Fundy National Park and the Petitcodiac watershed and transport them to Dark Harbour, Grand Manan Island, where they are raised in the ocean on the conservation farm until they are mature adults.
Trained Cooke Aquaculture staff use their knowledge and technology to ensure appropriate feed is used at the right time, that fish transfers back to the wild are conducted with as little stress as possible for the fish, and onsite farm infrastructure provides the appropriate care until the wild salmon are ready to be released back to their native rivers.
Once mature, the adult salmon are then transported back to their home rivers to spawn naturally. The hope is that once these salmon spawn, they will travel back out to sea to feed and return again one year later to continue the cycle. Atlantic salmon can do this migration and spawn two or even three times in their lifetime.
“We are seeing high numbers of salmon returns in the rivers at Fundy National Park through the program,” says Richardson. “By returning salmon at the adult stage, their offspring are spawned and hatched naturally in the wild which allows them to avoid compromises to wild fitness of being produced in captivity.”
“Advances in our ocean aquaculture technology and science have allowed us to reduce the many unknowns around marine mortality for this important species. We are very pleased to be using our fish farming innovations to be a key contributor to the increasing numbers of wild salmon returns,” Richardson concluded.
The inner Bay of Fundy population of wild Atlantic salmon has been listed as endangered under the Species at Risk Act since 2003.
Fundy Salmon Recovery’s partners and collaborators include Cooke Aquaculture, Parks Canada, the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association, University of New Brunswick, Fort Folly First Nation, New Brunswick Department of Agriculture, Aquaculture and Fisheries, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Village of Grand Manan, SIMCorp, Crime Stoppers and the Atlantic Salmon Law Enforcement Coalition.
Fort Folly Habitat Recovery, a partner since 2014, leads the Atlantic salmon conservation and recovery efforts on the Petitcodiac River system, which historically produced 20 percent of the overall inner-bay population.
Fort Folly Habitat Recovery Manager Tim Robinson says the aquaculture industry makes an important contribution to salmon conservation by helping teams safely rear larger numbers of Atlantic salmon in their natural marine environment and return them to multiple rivers.
“One river isn’t going to restore a population, but the more rivers that we can return adult salmon back to, the more chance that there’s going to be larger smolt runs resulting from that in subsequent years. The more smolt going out to sea, the better chance that more are going to survive to return again,” explained Robinson.
He adds that Fundy National Park has been seeing increasing returns throughout the year and estimates this year they could see their highest number of returns in decades. Petitcodiac, a younger sister project to that in Fundy National Park, has now counted 30 adult salmon returns in 2021, compared to a few years ago where it was void of any inner bay Atlantic salmon.
Wild Atlantic salmon are incredibly important as a keystone species for rivers and seeing the salmon population increase in Fundy National Park has helped bring life back to those rivers. The rise of Atlantic salmon also attracts natural nutrient deposits and other types of species that can survive and thrive.
The project also captured the attention of a Cooke customer, Samuels Seafood based in Philadelphia, which generously donates a portion of sale proceeds for every pound of exclusive Cooke-supplied Jail Island Salmon that is sold to the Fundy Salmon Recovery project.
The Fundy Salmon Recovery partners believe this conservation model could be adapted and replicated for other populations in decline as well as in other countries for other types of species.
Richardson says Cooke is working with the Medway River Salmon Association in Nova Scotia on a similar salmon recovery project and with the Department of Marine Resources and the Penobscot First Nation in Maine.
“The overall growth and success of the Fundy Salmon Recovery collaboration has been extremely exciting,” said Robinson. “This is something that none of us could have ever dreamed of being able to do on our own, and the way that we work with one another and complement each other’s efforts all for a common objective is really the best thing about the whole project.”
This story was sponsored by Cooke Aquaculture.