Salmon aquaculture is the rearing of salmonids for commercial purposes. These practices are typically carried out in saltwater farms located in coastal waters. The process of siting these facilities requires identifying and selecting areas that are economically, socially and environmentally suitable to locate them. Siting salmon aquaculture facilities has become a controversial resource management issue in British Columbia (B.C.), where distance-based criteria ultimately determine the location of these facilities. This thesis focuses on providing insights and concepts to inform and examine the salmon aquaculture facility siting process in B.C. It is argued that regulatory processes and outcomes in the context of a new industry could respond to mechanisms and factors that shape governmental agendas, illustrating how policy can behave reactively rather than in a precautionary manner. In this case, the outcomes of such reactive policies are reflected in siting criteria that yield implicit environmental and socio-economic disadvantages and tradeoffs. This way, siting criteria derive from expert judgements based on best available information while their associated uncertainties may lead to consider less-desirable sites while underestimating or overestimating risks, and overlooking important regional objectives, cumulative impacts and stakeholder values. The thesis further suggests that the future evolution of the salmon aquaculture facility siting process in B.C. could benefit from siting processes that have already been developed and implemented by other sectors. Different lines of reasoning that deal with processes of public negotiation, analytical decision-making and a systems' approach are explored as ways by which the salmon aquaculture facility siting process could evolve in the future toward creating more comprehensive policy.

An experiment was designed to determine whether the response of fish to graded dietary levels of essential fatty acids (n3) was affected by the total dietary lipid concentration. Juvenile coho salmon were fed practical diets varying in lipid source and total lipid content. The diets were fed in duplicate during a 27-week and a 12-week period ran in succession. The effects of the different dietary fatty acid concentrations on body fatty acids composition were determined after each period. The dietary fatty acid classes were expressed either as percent of the dry diet or percent of the dietary lipid. Analysis of the body lipid fatty acid composition was performed for neutral and polar lipid fractions. The effect of dietary fatty acid concentration on growth and mortality was determined over a 12-week growth study (period 2). A 24-hour saltwater challenge was performed at the end of period 2. It was used to examine the effect of dietary fatty acid concentration on saltwater tolerance. Dietary n6 and n3 fatty acids appeared to be selectively incorporated into the body polar lipid pool. Linoleate and linolenate underwent elongation and desaturation which resulted in the inhibition of the elongation and desaturation of 18:ln9. The neutral lipid pool served as a source of n3 fatty acids for the polar lipid when dietary intake was limited by low temperatures during period 1. The body neutral monounsaturated and 18:1 monounsaturated fatty acids consistently reflected the composition of the diet. The n3 fatty acid concentration in the neutral lipid was also directly related to the dietary fatty acid composition during period 2. The effect of dietary fatty acids on the body neutral or polar fatty acid composition did not depend on the manner in which the dietary fatty acids were expressed. There was also no significant effect of dietary total lipid concentration on the relationship between dietary fatty acids and their incorporation into the body lipids. The growth response was difficult to interpret because of the high mortality. There was a significant difference in mortality among treatments. A positive relationship between dietary concentrations of total n3 fatty acids or n3 highly unsaturated fatty acids and mortality became evident following analysis of the regression of mortality as a function of dietary fatty acid composition. The dietary fatty acid composition did not appear to alter the saltwater tolerance of the 1+ coho salmon. / Land and Food Systems, Faculty of / Graduate

Salmon aquaculture is the rearing of salmonids for commercial purposes. These practices are typically carried out in saltwater farms located in coastal waters. The process of siting these facilities requires identifying and selecting areas that are economically, socially and environmentally suitable to locate them. Siting salmon aquaculture facilities has become a controversial resource management issue in British Columbia (B.C.), where distance-based criteria ultimately determine the location of these facilities. This thesis focuses on providing insights and concepts to inform and examine the salmon aquaculture facility siting process in B.C. It is argued that regulatory processes and outcomes in the context of a new industry could respond to mechanisms and factors that shape governmental agendas, illustrating how policy can behave reactively rather than in a precautionary manner. In this case, the outcomes of such reactive policies are reflected in siting criteria that yield implicit environmental and socio-economic disadvantages and tradeoffs. This way, siting criteria derive from expert judgements based on best available information while their associated uncertainties may lead to consider less-desirable sites while underestimating or overestimating risks, and overlooking important regional objectives, cumulative impacts and stakeholder values. The thesis further suggests that the future evolution of the salmon aquaculture facility siting process in B.C. could benefit from siting processes that have already been developed and implemented by other sectors. Different lines of reasoning that deal with processes of public negotiation, analytical decision-making and a systems' approach are explored as ways by which the salmon aquaculture facility siting process could evolve in the future toward creating more comprehensive policy. / Science, Faculty of / Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for / Graduate