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Larry Albright, a microbiologist and Simon Fraser University professor emeritus, has helped AgriMarine, a Vancouver-based fish farm company, launch the world’s first commercial closed-containment Salmonid fish farm in China.

AgriMarine has developed a floating solid wall tank system that, unlike conventional fish farms, keeps its effluent away from its surrounding environment. Albright says the system leaves little to zero environmental footprint by preventing uneaten fish food and fish waste from polluting the surrounding marine ecosystem. The system also reduces the spread of diseases among farmed fish and prevents them from escaping into the open ocean. Conventional fish farming has long been the subject of global controversy for fear that their water net-cage pens promote disease in farmed and wild salmon because of sealice infection.

Scientists and environmentalists are also concerned that easy access to surrounding ocean water enables conventionally farmed fish to escape and threaten wild fish habitats.

Albright’s development of a land-based, closed-containment fish farm that rears fish in freshwater in Langley helped inspire AgriMarine’s development of its floating system, which has just been installed at the company’s subsidiary in northeast China.

Floating in a reservoir near Benxi city in Liaoning province, AgriMarine’s 24-metre diameter tank contains three million litres of circulating water stocked with 50,000 juvenile steelhead trout. Over the next year, Albright, a member of AgriMarine’s board of directors, will help the company grow the farmed trout to 2-3 kg in size, at which point they’ll be harvested and sold commercially.

“This initial farm, when fully completed, will have 10 tanks with an annual production capacity of more than 907,000 kg of fish,” says Albright, who helped develop AgriMarine’s waste management, feed and life support systems.

“The project in China was developed first because of lower capital costs and fewer regulatory hurdles than in Canada,” adds Albright. “The local Benxi government is very environmentally conscious and supports this project strongly.”

Albright is also involved in AgriMarine’s development of an ocean-based, closed-containment fish farm that will float in Campbell River’s Middle Bay and raise Pacific salmon smolts for commercial sale.

—30— (electronic photo files available)

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