Regulating and monitoring British Columbia’s marine finfish aquaculture facilities 2015–2016: Reporting requirements and submissions

Reporting requirements

Under the Pacific Aquaculture Regulations (PAR), licence holders are required to submit to DFO reports that fall into two broad categories: scheduled reports and event-based reports. DFO receives over 700 reports and documents per year from marine finfish aquaculture licence holders. All reports are reviewed by DFO to validate content, to ensure that they contain all elements required by the licence conditions, and to determine if they were submitted on time. When a report contains only minor administrative omissions or errors, and the licence holder corrects these in a timely manner, the reports may be considered complete and on time. Beginning in 2016, some reporting components required under PAR were removed to avoid duplication with reporting requirements under the new Aquaculture Activities Regulations (e.g. use of pesticides and therapeautants). Data for these reports are collected and reported nationally.

Scheduled reports

Reports are submitted on a pre-determined schedule (monthly, quarterly or annually):

• Aquaculture Activities Regulations (AAR) Reports^{Footnote 1}
• Annual Aquaculture Statistical Report (AASR)
• inventory plans
• mortality by category
• stock transfers
• sea lice
• use of chemicals, feed and other substances^{Footnote 2}
• use of lights

Figure 6 summarizes the scheduled reports submitted to DFO from 2015 to 2016 and shows how many were complete and whether they were submitted on time.

Event-based reports

Event-based reports are submitted following specific incidents or events identified in the licence conditions. These reports include:

• benthic (BOD) monitoring^{Footnote 3}
• escapes
• marine mammal drownings
• marine mammal authorized predator control activities
• incidental catch
• urgent mortality event and follow up reports
• alternate cage array use

Data on the event-based reports can be found in subsequent sections of this report.

For specific reporting timelines and detailed requirements for each report, please refer to the marine finfish conditions of licence: www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/aquaculture/licence-permis/index-eng.html.

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