NA - Escaped Farmed Fish - A Trilateral Cooperation Initiative between Norway, Canada and USA

A trilateral network on escaped farmed fish was established during a workshop in Washington DC, 1-3 November 2005. The first meeting developed fruitful discussions, and managed to establish a framework for future work. Both the preventive approach (how to hinder escapement, either by improved technology or procedures) and the curative approach (how to reduce the damage once the fish has escaped) were developed in the Washington meeting. The framework was checked to be highly regulatory-relevant during the meeting. The next step was to organise a workshop in Norway in May 2006, to develop at least one proposal on escaped fish, including participants from Norway, Canada and the USA. In this proposal we are applying for funding to organise this workshop. The aim of the Workshop is to develop a collaborative research programme between Norway, Canada and USA to minimize interactions between escaped farmed fish and wild fish according to the guidelines from the workshop in Washington in November (Appendix 2 ) including research on : - Methods to improve containment and to register escapes as soon as possible. - Methods that will immediately recapture a large part of the escaped fish. - Methods to reduce interactions between escaped and wild fish in the long term. The Workshop will focus on Atlantic salmon and Atlantic cod. The organisers of the workshop will prepare reports in advance so that the workshop will be as effective as possible. The workshop will discuss the causes of farmed fish escapes and ana lyse whether changes can be related to industrial and regulatory development. Furthermore, discussion will focus on preventive measures. What technical and operational steps can be taken in order to reduce the risk of escapes? Do we see effective regulato ry measures in this area? When fish escape from a net pen, what might be effective techniques for recapturing them? The session should end up with plans for future work to reduc