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Why is Holyrood giving huge sums to fish farmers to solve problems that are entirely of their own making?

Michael Wigan questions the government’s support of aquaculture

Anglers in Scotland were never overenthusiastic about the idea of a rod license. Why pay the government for the right to fish whilst also paying the fishing owner for the same thing? It amounted to charging for the right to carry a rod.

They certainly will not be entranced then to discover that the Scottish Government is busily handing out money to the industry which has decimated the fish populations those anglers once tried to catch. Salmon and sea-trout were once a lucrative source of income for western seaboard tourism. Plagues of salmon farm sea lice have decimated them.

Some £22 million was nonetheless produced for the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre, match funding coming from the industry. Targets included research into ‘biological control’ of sea lice, or using other fish to eat them. A further £576,000 was spent examining the dropdown residues and waste products from excreting salmon. These pile up on the seabed, turning it to grey paste; Canadians joke that salmon farmers are the only farmers who never shovel their own manure.

More f unds were found to measure sea lice effects in a programme called SARF (the Scottish Aquaculture Research Forum). The expansion of salmon farming is an official government objective. So, seemingly, is spending money helping solve problems of the industry’s own making.

The wild fishery also spends money on the befouled cuckoo’s nest at sea. Once, for the

‘Why bury, at a cost, that which can simply swim away?’

angler, a fish was a fish. If it pulled the line and bent the stick, satisfaction resulted. Now we anglers look a little harder at what is on the end. Is it a wild salmon marvellously evolved to live where we caught it, or a fast-fattened slob escaped from its cage? Is it the iconic crowning ocean-crossing jewel in God’s piscine invention or an antibiotic-laden feral substitute?

Managers on the west coast using genetics were shocked to discover that a quarter of rod catches were feral escapees from farm cages. On one river in New Brunswick, escaped farm salmon have dislodged all but one per cent of the wild population.

Where the twin Caithness rivers Langwell and Berriedale debouche into the Moray Firth local manager Anson MacAuslan was netting a May fish for a tiring angler only to note the deformed fins and odd spotting betraying an escapee. This couch potato weighed 27lb. The smile faded from the angler’s face like cloud crossing the sun.

When gathering broodstock on the River Helmsdale last autumn three large escaped farm salmon were caught. And killed – their progeny is unwelcome in the genetics.

The government itself acknowledges this and has issued a cautionary note saying that farmed escapees should be killed, over-riding any rules about catch and release.

So why were these fish so big? Salmon farmers want trim 11 pounders for processing. If this fish was an escapee it left the fish farm as a smaller creature. Unless it was a brood-stock salmon used for spawning. The purpose of big hens is to produce lots of eggs.

I asked the salmon growers about disposal procedures for retired broodstock. As you would expect, like on a livestock farm, they are despatched and taken away. Farmers with fallen livestock pay for this service. The difference is that with salmon farmers the whole matter is self-regulated. Some people are asking, why bury, at a cost, what can swim away?

The murk surrounding salmon farming grows ever more un-salubrious. In Chile 25 million farm salmon were killed this year after disease outbreaks. Scotland is reputed for the laxity of controls – we permit a far higher level of sea lice build-up and higher levels of escape than other countries.

This goes some way to explaining why the gross earnings from Scotland’s biggest fish farming operation more than trebled at last reporting. But the profits from the world’s biggest salmon farmer do not benefit this country; they are remitted to Oslo in oil-rich Norway. Why we should be helping to boost them, quickening the disappearance of our native fish, is a puzzle – or worse.