Thousands of squirming salmon smolts slid this week into closed pens at a land-based fish farm, and members of the ‘Namgis First Nation hope the fish are swimming into history.
The $8.5-million ‘Namgis Closed Containment Salmon Farm, on reserve land south of Port McNeill, is the first commercial-scale closed-containment farm in Canada — and one of the first in the world.
“We would like to see this day as the day we started to transition from open-net fish farms into land-based fish farms,” ‘Namgis Chief Bill Cranmer said in an interview.
The ‘Namgis, known as the People of the Salmon, have 4,000 years of tradition tying them to Pacific salmon and it is with the hope of saving wild salmon that they are getting into the business of farming Atlantic salmon.
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