McColl Magazine Free Enterprise
People in Business
Thursday, March 24, 2022
CPI Equipment Inc. Working on Potential Transition for Salmon Producers
Kris McNichol, President, CPI Equipment Inc., says, “CPI Equipment Inc. is proud to partner with Grieg Seafood BC on their full-scale CO2L Flow semi-closed system in 2022. Over the past two years, CPI has worked diligently with Grieg Seafood on trials to improve the efficiency of oxygen transfer to seawater in their sea pens by using CPI’s ODiN Aerations system in conjunction with Moleaer’s nanotechnology. By achieving a greater supply of water quality within the semi-closed environment, we have been able to support the creation of a new ocean-based system. Working with our customers for over 20 years and striving to develop better technology within the aquaculture market both locally and internationally is an important part of our company's success. The knowledge-sharing and teamwork between Grieg Seafood and CPI Equipment shows how people, ideas, and new technology can collaborate to meet the needs of aquaculture for the future.
Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Made-in-BC Semi-closed System Installed at Grieg Seafood BC Farms in Esperanza Inlet
After trialing a made-in-BC semi-closed technology solution at its farms off the Sunshine Coast region, Grieg Seafood BC Ltd. (Grieg) has announced it will be proceeding with the installation of these semi-closed system at all three of its farms in Esperanza Inlet, off the west coast of Vancouver Island.
The new CO2L Flow system (pronounced Cool Flow) is a form of semi-closed containment, which allows for farmers to raise or lower custom designed farm enclosures – ensuring the farmed fish benefit from natural ocean conditions, while also providing protection for wild salmon. The system has been used successfully to rear several generations of fish at Grieg’s farms in the Sunshine Coast region.
In all the trials, farmers noted better growth, lower mortality, better feed conversion rates (meaning the fish are more effective at converting feed into growth), and most significantly - a dramatic reduction in the need for sea lice treatments.
“As a company, we are always looking for ways to improve our operations, and this includes transitioning from standard farming equipment, to new, cutting-edge technology aimed at reducing potential impacts from our operations. This new system utilizes retractable barriers, which are capable of being lowered to 15 metres, fully encapsulating the sides of the farm. This has several benefits, including preventing the lateral interaction of wild and farmed salmon populations, providing protection for farmed populations from harmful algae, and allowing our farmers to better control water quality in the system using a unique aeration technology,” says Rocky Boschman, Managing Director for Grieg Seafood BC Ltd.
“As ocean-based farmers, one of the most common questions or concerns we hear is regarding sea lice, and the transfer of lice between wild and farmed populations. The CO2 L Flow system with its barrier protection has resulted in drastically reduced sea lice numbers on the farmed population, which in turn reduces the need for us to treat. During the trial period at our west coast site, we were able to keep sea lice levels so low that the fish did not require treatment for lice. Overall, we are pleased with the results and there is no denying that this new system represents a transition towards what in-ocean farms can one day become.”
What sets this system apart from others is the use of local knowledge, and on-the-ground learning to guide the development of a system which would work in partnership with nature to address challenges.
“I have been farming in these waters for over 30 years. In that time, I have learned that nature is the best engineer. If you want to find a solution, you need to work with the ocean and the natural conditions. So, when we started looking at how we could adapt semi-closed technology into our operations, we looked first and foremost to the oceans’ naturally occurring deep, clean water as a guide,“ says Dean Trethewey, Seawater Production, Certifications and Regulatory Director.
“The CO2L Flow Max system has taken some tried and true technology, such as sea lice curtains, and paired them with cutting edge aeration technology, to create a completely new system. During sensitive wild salmon migration periods or times when we know there is harmful algae in the region, we can lower the barriers on the farm, forming a barrier between the wild salmon and the farmed population, this prevents lateral interaction, and significantly reduces the transmission of sea lice between the populations. The barriers can be fully lifted outside of these periods, allowing the farmed fish to benefit from natural ocean conditions, temperatures, currents, and oxygen levels.”
To bring this technology to life, Grieg relied on the expertise, knowledge and successful collaboration with several Vancouver Island based technology and services companies – like CPI Equipment and Poseidon Ocean Systems. A leading international oxygen solution company, Oxzo Technologies, was also involved in the creation of some components for the system.
Although the system has shown amazing results in initial trials, Grieg continues to look for ways to improve the system to help further reduce any potential impacts from its operations.
“As a company, we will continue to look for ways in which we can innovate and continue to improve our operations. Currently, the new system already has tremendous benefits through the elimination of lateral interaction between wild and farmed populations and provides both welfare and performance benefits for our farmed salmon – but it doesn’t collect solid waste which is the next opportunity we want to address. We are continuing to look for solutions that will support the recovery of solid waste and ways in which it could be used for some type of value-add product like fertilizer or soil enrichment,” added Boschman. “We will continue to look to nature, local technology, and our farmers to help provide us with solutions as we continue to innovate, transition and improve.”
The system will be installed at all three farms in Esperanza Inlet (Lutes Creek farm, Steamer Point farm and the Esperanza farm) in time for the outmigration of juvenile wild salmon in early 2023.
CO2L Flow system quick facts and additional Information:
• Grieg Seafood launched the first trial of the system in 2019
• Since then, three pilot cycles of fish have been raised in the system
• Overall, fish raised in the system see an average increase of 40 per cent in growth, a 19 per cent (19%) increase in survival, and a 13 per cent (13%) improvement in feed conversion ratio (FCR)
• The system uses retractable barriers to ensure there is no lateral transmission between wild and farmed salmon populations – which is important during the critical in and out wild salmon migration periods
• During periods when the barriers are down, the system uses an innovative, cutting-edge oxygen technology, to address low-oxygen levels within the farm system - helping to ensure the welfare of the farmed population
• To date, Grieg Seafood BC has seen a dramatic reduction in the frequency or need to treat farmed populations within the system for sea lice
• The system is unique in that it can be adapted to fit existing Grieg Seafood farm sites
• The system is sourced and built locally, contributing to the local economy and supporting the development of innovation and technology on North Vancouver Island
• Moving forward, Grieg Seafood will continue to look for ways to collect solid waste for value added products such as fertilizer or enriched soils
Kris McNichol, President, CPI Equipment Inc., says, “CPI Equipment Inc. is proud to partner with Grieg Seafood BC on their full-scale CO2L Flow semi-closed system in 2022. Over the past two years, CPI has worked diligently with Grieg Seafood on trials to improve the efficiency of oxygen transfer to seawater in their sea pens by using CPI’s ODiN Aerations system in conjunction with Moleaer’s nanotechnology. By achieving a greater supply of water quality within the semi-closed environment, we have been able to support the creation of a new ocean-based system. Working with our customers for over 20 years and striving to develop better technology within the aquaculture market both locally and internationally is an important part of our company's success. The knowledge-sharing and teamwork between Grieg Seafood and CPI Equipment shows how people, ideas, and new technology can collaborate to meet the needs of aquaculture for the future.
Heather Clarke, Co-Founder, Poseidon Ocean Systems, says, “When we were first approached by Grieg Seafood to collaborate on the new semi-closed technology they were developing, we jumped at the opportunity as this project will not only provide solutions to global problems, but also addresses some of the biggest challenges faced by the industry in terms of sea lice, algae, and improved conditions within the farm system. Poseidon is a Campbell River based company, which was founded only six years ago. Because of the vision of industry leaders like Grieg Seafood who are committed to constant improvement, evolution and working head-on to address the concerns raised regarding salmon farming, we have been able to expand our business internationally to assist producers like Grieg Seafood and others meet their biggest challenges.”
Gonzalo Boehmwald, Commercial Assistant Manager Oxzo Technologies Canada, says, “This project – the CO2L Flow system - is demonstrating what is possible in salmon farming in terms of using innovation and new technology to improve operations, and Oxzo Technologies Canada is proud to be part of the team working on delivering these new systems for Grieg Seafood BC Ltd. Oxzo has been helping farmers find unique solutions for more than a decade using innovative and cost-effective solutions of supplemental aeration and oxygenation. Our proven, patented technologies and Grieg Seafood’s drive for innovation and overall operational improvements are a perfect fit."
Friday, April 11, 2014
Don’t Let a Nickel Hold Up a Dollar FNNBOA President's Message, Spring 2014
A national non-profit organization is fighting in the trenches of First Nation housing. First Nations National Building Officers Association (FNNBOA) is a volunteer organization that represents a profession offering technical services in residential construction and renovation on-reserve.
FNNBOA members are qualified to deal with house plan reviews, inspections, recommendation of repairs, and they provide technical advocacy and advisory services for on-reserve housing.
Chief Keith Maracle, Tyendinaga, Ontario, is secretary of the volunteer board, “There are approximately 250 to 300 employed in this sector,” a small number in relation to the number of First Nation Indian Act-governed communities in Canada, no less than 700 inhabited Indian Reservations.
FNNBOA faces a peculiar challenge to expand the role of its officers in First Nation housing, “We are seen as regulatory,” said Chief Maracle, and regulations are apparently not something to be desired in the fractious world of First Nation housing.
FNNBOA members are qualified to inspect housing construction, “We have occupational standards, a code of ethics, and certification procedures to inspect houses on reserve.” Chief Maracle says FNNBOA members are qualified to support CMHC and mortgage approvals, INAC leasehold guarantee programs, and reports to Environment Canada.
Richard ‘Bud’ Jobin is co-President of FNNBOA who hails from central Alberta. Since 2002 when they laid the organizational groundwork, these two men have been advocates of professional First Nation housing services, “Certified inspection of First Nation housing is becoming a compliance issue,” says Bud, “which impacts on mortgage and insurance.”
It may not be here but the age of reason is coming over First Nation housing policy and FNNBOA intends to have First Nation housing inspection services in the ready. They have training affiliations with George Brown University, Humber College, NAIT, and Vancouver Island University to produce qualified First Nation Housing inspectors.
Bank creating viable housing market
Royal Bank of Canada illustrates the growing importance of certified inspection services in First Nation housing. RBC introduced a program this spring to help First Nations capitalize on economic growth opportunities.
RBC announced a new mortgage program called the Leasehold Mortgage Program to, “provide First Nations members with greater flexibility and choice when it comes to financing the purchase or construction of a home.” It also helps create marketable housing in reserve communities.
“RBC has worked with First Nations leaders/governments for many years to find and provide options for financing a home in the same manner that is offered off a reserve,” said David Cutway, manager, Residential Mortgages Policy, RBC.
“This new CMHC default-insured program . . . allows qualified borrowers on qualified reserve lands to obtain a home mortgage, benefitting both the purchaser and the First Nation community.”
Financing of on-reserve housing has been limited in the past, said Mr. Cutway. “For example, First Nations members had to obtain a band or Ministerial Loan Guarantee (MLG) to secure a loan to purchase a home on reserve land. In addition, the First Nation government was responsible for the construction, maintenance and repair of these homes.”
The Leasehold Mortgage Program can help First Nations improve economic development through the construction of new homes, renovations to existing homes, purchases of new or existing homes, and construction of duplexes to four-plexes.
First Nations communities may also use the program to attract non-Aboriginal homebuyers to properties developed on leasehold land, such as the housing development projects undertaken by the Westbank and Tzeachten First Nations, both of which are located in British Columbia. Ed note There is no advertising sold in support of all the research and writing, so feel free to donate in aid of the important message delivered:
Saturday, August 10, 2013
The Winter of severe discontent
There was a time when I would not let go of the feeling that I was being watched, even when intelligent people said things like, "Wouldn't life be interesting for someone who was important enough for them to do that?" This would leave me more convinced, not of my own importance, but of the stupidity of people who spend their time watching others. Then I met Benny Winter. I did not meet him much as had him foisted upon me. Then it is my opinion of their intelligence which informs me 'they' foisted him upon me, thus he was free and absolved of responsibility for the intelligence he gathered and untrammeled by asylum rules to be a complete idiot who was given no orders outside snoop and that he was doing, a typical intelligence gathering operative, one who makes no value judgment except when he cannot contain his stupidity. And when we became neighbors it was immediately apparent that he struggled with containment. From this moment I would begin to long for the feeling of privacy as never before.
With no one above suspicion in my world it stands to reason that my encounter and subsequent eighteen month exposure to Winter was far from accidental. I stumbled into my calamity with this mental midget thinking not that he was any source of interest or concern because he wasn't. I was interested in nothing but my fiance whom I was anxious to marry. I met Winter when we went to the door of a house inquiring into a rental opportunity. To the naked eye this was not so much an opportunity as a goose laying giant golden eggs. What this means is the apartment to rent was an offer I could not refuse.
"Can I have a cat?" inquired my future wife.
"The only cat allowed in the building is this one," said Winters. We looked at a metal dish containing a disarray of bones and ash sitting on a shelf near the kitchen-area eating table. "I'm a Buddhist. It was the greatest cat in the world,” of which I know little, about either. Buddha. Or cats. He went to considerable length to describe a few of the cat's attributes. It came as no surprise. It would be de rigeur for a guy who had an assemblage of peculiar personal items including three bicycles hanging on the wall like a coat rake and a set of drums in the living room. "I don't play them very often any more, I used to live with a bunch of musicians." I saw an opening and took it, "What do you call a guy hangs around with the band?" He looked at me searching my eyes and I saw him suddenly as a dyslexic staring at an open book, nowhere to go. "The drummer." I am always at odds with the Intelligence community. If you're not with them you're against them. I bet dyslexics make useful intelligence gatherers.
He laughed and seemed to appreciate the nuance but I knew that was a lie. The house was an old wooden building dated 1907 and probably due for demolition or designation of heritage site. We found it on Kijiji that day urgently needing a place to live. I was newly accompanied by my bride-to-be, we had been living together for the past month. Funny story. I met her on Facebook and decided in the twinkling of an eye she was the girl for me. She arrived from the UK a month earlier, when I had taken an apartment in the city and we needed to escape an ant infestation found living above the Electric Owl Nightclub under the wrath of an armless dwarf (who it so happens was in addition to being short also armless). Housing in Vancouver is a serious challenge and here lay the solution to our housing dilemma, practically gift wrapped.
I was concerned with my fiance's feelings in the matter about housing, I can assure you, and I hardly paid attention to anything he said as he prattled about previous roommates. We weren't going to be roommates. The old house had four separate units. We wanted to see the ground floor suite with the entrance on the garden at the back. I was sure there was nothing in this man's history that was going to interest me. I wasn't required to listen after the paperwork was done and I was about to step into a ground level suite on North Nanaimo Street all sewn up for an unbelievable price, a fresh start to my life with my fiance. Soon we should marry and start with the Marital bliss. "He's evil," she whispered. "I don't want to live here." He's evil? I wanted to argue that nobody's got a monopoly on it. "He's not the landlord, he's just an agent," I replied. Once I saw the place my heart was set. My fiance, Nadya, would take some convincing since she saw real evil in this landlord agent Winter. I saw him as somebody barely qualified to sort the mail. We did a tour and met the poor indigenous chap who occupied the suite presently and who was evicted pending the moment he was told to leave. "Well his little dog is a solitary exception to the rule on pets." Me and Nadya watched the little terrier do a frantic tour of the apartment. "He paid a generous deposit for this one-time privilege and by the looks of it he will be losing most of it," said Winters, in front of the morose looking Indian sitting on the bed appreciating the chaotic surroundings for his final hours. I felt a bit sad but figured the dog must have a home to go to. Winter continued extolling the Indian's bright future. I realized he might be returning to an Indian Reserve with their scenarios of fifteen people to a house, even so, he didn't look all that depressed. "So you'll be moving out soon," I said, conversationally. I was astonished when his face brightened with a smile and his dog suddenly stood still, "Tomorrow," and I would not have been surprised to hear him mutter something like, . . ."to my endless relief," and I thought to myself, sure, that dog's probably driving him crazy.
Turns out it wasn't the dog driving him crazy, but only he knows. It turns out, Winter was the source of the crazy, and persistent, that was the nature of the crazy. He liked to call it OCD. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. More like an addiction to his right hand and a strong embrace of mysogeny. Everybody needs a reason to sell out, sell cheap, sell. sell. sell. He was just fucking happy to escape the pen they held him in at the asylum. He was relieved. It was his, this relief. It was also the relief of the staff at the St. Michaels Pyschiatric Wing. He was more than willing to share. He was into it. Nose first. He wouldn't stop. He was relentless. Relentless. RELENTLESS.
This became apparent in the twinkling of an eye as well, but I had other things to see. I was distracted by a lot of serious and rapid changes. I couldn't keep up myself. I had to sober up and stop a lot of debilitating activities just to stay even with all the changes. I was a cork in a typhoon. It was challenging but at the same time I was kind of mindless. I meant it. I meant to be mindless. I figured it was a necessary condition for dealing with endless mind fuckery, mind control, mind numbing madness, mind erasing, mind crushing, mind ignoring, mindless, breathless, seemingly endless fuckery. I didn't care wither or whether Benny Winter was the spawn of Satan, son of the Beauty Queen and Christ hisself, didn't care if Winter was discontented or happy as a pig in shit, happy to be drooling in the yard or drooling in his porridge. It didn't really matter to me at all. Winter was dead to me. Life is dead to me. I am a stone leaking fluids.
As it turned out, I put myself into a situation that I had not been expecting at all. I mean, I realize I am sort of a curiosity. I realize I am interesting to someone other than me, and maybe some lot of someones other than me. Maybe not celebrity interesting. I am damaged goods. I am seriously destroyed, and seriously destructed, and seriously fucked up, and not in an interesting way at all, but I am still interesting to somebody, and somebody wants to see my every move, hear every whine and plea, see me react under pressure. They want to hear my every prayer. I think they cannot believe it keeps working. I sympathize. I believe it keeps working. I don't expect to know why. It's because of stone. Stone matters.