I didn't know Moose Mountain was still in operation. Is it?
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Growing pains in Canada’s fish farms
By Peter Gorrie
Toronto Star
July 19, 2003
CAPREOL, Ont.- Dark-silver Arctic Char – about 50,000 of them, averaging 500 grams – swim in languid circles inside a huge plastic bag. Until, that is, site manager Vince Wissell flings scoops of food pellets across the surface. Then, the enclosure froths and foams s hungry fish battle for the brown bits of nourishment that fatten them until they’re large enough to be filleted. The bag, 10 metres in diameter and 13 metres deep, is one of four suspended in the cold water that fills a former open-pit iron mine outside this mining and railroad town, an hour north of Sudbury.
If you buy fresh char fillets in a GTA supermarket, chances are it came from here.
The operation is called Moose Mountain Fish Fisheries, a deceptively primitive looking array of rough wooden buildings, tarp-enclosed steel tanks, pipes, pumps, generators and computer gear sprawled over rugged pre-Cambrian rocks. This year, Moose Mountain will send 100 tonnes of fish to market. In a couple more, in full production, the total should double. It’s a unique part of Canada’s effort to stay afloat in the vast and expanding global ocean of fish farming, or aquaculture. |
