Structured Aquaculture Development with a Canadian Perspective

Abstract

Wild fisheries resources in Canada will be increasingly replaced or augmented by aquaculture as they diminish or encounter difficulty in satisfying market demands. Commercial forms of aquaculture still suffer from the lack of innovative policies, well-delineated strategies, and pilot-scale experimentation in operational planning. The aquaculture activities in Canada are reviewed and analyzed in this paper against a model for technological planning and social futures, and against developments elsewhere in food systems. It concludes that substantial research and experimental development effort are still needed, and that the lead time for undertaking these activities is short if risk capital is not to be jeopardized. High priorities are given in support of i) innovative policy development (resource inventories, public anticipations, etc.), ii) strategic forecasting and planning (business strategies, modular enterprise structures, marketing, disease control, a gene pool of aquatic stocks, sea-ranching, aquatic polycultures, introduction of nonindigenous species, waste utilization, etc.), and iii) commercial operations (feed formulation, brood stock selection, water reconditioning, product development, production tactics, pollution control, etc.). There is a shortage of skilled aquaculture practitioners, and a need for more highly trained scientific personnel to address themselves explicitly to aquaculture. In Canada, this industry has already begun to take on an innovative structure that makes it a model for other forms of fisheries development.