Plans for offshore fish farms under fire

Environmental groups have attacked plans to establish Scotland's first offshore salmon farms, claiming the industry is unsustainable and that the measure could further harm seas already at risk.
Marine Harvest is hoping to implement the system as part of a £40 million expansion of its Scottish operations. The company wants to take advantage of the growing demand for farmed Scottish salmon across Europe, where consumption has been rising 6 to 8 per cent annually. It also believes the measure could also help address concerns about the environmental impact of its current fish farms, which are usually located in the relative shelter of sea lochs. Critics claim farmed salmon waste pollutes inland waters and carry diseases that threaten wild stock.
Duncan McLaren, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “We are unconvinced by these plans. Farming of carnivorous fish is unsustainable as an industry because it relies on a greater input of fish product than the salmon it produces, roughly 5kg of feed for 1kg of fish.
“Moving farms offshore as a means of reducing pollution just moves the problem further out at a time when our seas are under grave threat from climate change.”

Mr McLaren suggested that gaining planning permission for the proposals could be a challenge. “We will be interested to see what the environmental impact assessments find,” he said.
James Reynolds, from RSPB Scotland, also raised concerns. “We would question how sustainable the industry is in its current form in the amount of fish meal that is made to bring the salmon to market size, so if there were measures to increase that we would want to see it happen in the most sustainable manner possible,” he said.
Under the new system, fish farms will be positioned further out to sea, with potential sites already identified in the waters of the Minch, off the Outer Hebrides. Instead of travelling to work every day, staff will live on purpose built barges, and undertake shift patterns similar to those found on North Sea oil platforms, spending eight days on and four days off. Pay has yet to be decided but workers will be compensated for living away from dry land. About 40 jobs will be created in total, with a shore base also to be built on the tiny island of Barra.
Alan Sutherland, Marine Harvest’s managing director, said: “The time is right for the next generation of fish farming. The demand for our product is there and we know the quality is there.
“We have been looking at the opportunities that exist and believe the future of fish farming lies further offshore. This is possible if we use residential fish farms, which we use in Norway and British Columbia, where I previously worked.”
The firm aims to develop four new farms, each costing about £3 million and about three times the size of the average current farm. When completed, they will allow the company to produce an extra 20,000 tonnes of fish per year. The company already produces about 40,000 tonnes of salmon annually, about two thirds of which is sold in supermarkets across the UK.
Steve Bracken, the firm's business development manager, said the remoteness of the sites would make them more environmentally friendly, as they would be further away from the spawning grounds of wild salmon and trout.
Angling groups gave the proposals a cautious welcome.
Andrew Wallace, from the Association of Salmon Fishery Boards and the Rivers and Fisheries Trust of Scotland, said: “We are extremely interested in this initiative. Offshore production could have minimal impact on wild fisheries.
“However, we are very much aware that the industry wishes to expand to take advantage of the collapse in supply from Chile. If the additional capacity developed offshore does not actually allow the removal of many of the existing inshore salmon farms, which cause so much damage to wild fish populations, then this will not amount to progress.”