This is an article from the July 14, 2011 Chronicle Herald reporting on the NS Dept. of Fisheries and Aquaculture meeting regarding new aquaculture open-pen finfish licences in Shelburne Tuesday evening. Not much coverage of issues raised by community members except concerns about possible impacts on lobster catches. Karen Traversy, Coastal Coalition of NS Steering Committee
By BRIAN MEDEL Yarmouth Bureau
Wed, Jul 13 – 4:53 AM
SHELBURNE — Sixteen new aquaculture jobs will have been created in the Digby area by the end of this month, says a vice-president of Cooke Aquaculture of New Brunswick.
Nell Halse said 700,000 young salmon are now swimming in one of two new fish farms in St. Mary’s Bay, part of a five-year, $150-million plan that could bring almost 400 jobs to the area.
Halse spoke Tuesday evening in Shelburne at a government hearing held to inform people about another Cooke Aquaculture application to open three new sites — two in Jordan Bay and one at the entrance to Shelburne Harbour — that would be part of the project.
More than 375 people attended. Some wondered why provincial Fisheries Minister Sterling Belliveau wasn’t there, but his staff said he doesn’t attend public information sessions or hearings.
The minister received a list of 52 questions from concerned citizens last week.
“He received those Thursday. He has not . . . had time to review all 52 of those questions,” Celeste Sulliman, a provincial fisheries and aquaculture spokeswoman, said at the meeting.
“We will be . . . taking a look at all of them. There are some of them that we as a department can address and we will, and there are others that may be directed to another agency or to the company.”
Cooke Aquaculture, of Blacks Harbour, N.B., has been farming fish in Nova Scotia for about 15 years.
“Up till now, all of the fish that (we’ve) grown in Nova Scotia waters have been taken to New Brunswick for processing,” Halse said in an interview before the meeting.
“So the communities and the government have been asking why don’t we do this in Nova Scotia?”
She said Cooke needs more fish — about three million in total — from its aquaculture pens if it is to have a year-round fish processing plant in the area.
Cooke is talking about developing a hatchery in Digby, expanding a feed mill in Truro and either renovating an existing building near Shelburne as a processing plant or building a new one.
The project includes work in the three towns as well as the two new St. Mary’s Bay farms and the three newly proposed Shelburne County farms that people gathered to hear more about Tuesday.
It took close to two years to get the St. Mary’s Bay farms approved.
Cooke now has eight farms in Nova Scotia, and ideally a third of them should lie fallow for up to a year at a time, she said.
Some in the audience wanted to know if fish farms adversely affect lobster catches. Federal fisheries staff in attendance said there is no evidence or research to support such a conclusion.