Mortality rates at Lamlash fish farm are revealed
Figures highlighting the mortality rates of fish farms in Scotland show the Lamlash farm, owned by the Scottish Salmon Company, had nearly a 30 per cent death rate in 2019.
The statistical analysis of more than 100 farms, known as feedlots, over a three-year period is made up of publicly available statistics provided by the salmon farmers themselves and includes Scotland’s largest fish farming companies including The Scottish Salmon Company, Marine Harvest, Scottish Sea Farms and Wester Ross Fisheries.
The data, compiled by Corin Smith, founder of Inside Scottish Salmon Feedlots (ISSF), is the first of its kind to be compiled to provide an overall picture of the mortality rates.
In 2019 The Lamlash farm, operated by The Scottish Salmon Company, had the 21st worst stock mortality rate with 29.6 per cent. With a licence for a maximum of 1,154 tonnes in 2019, 341.5 tonnes of salmon needed to be disposed of.
In one set of data, based on a full cycle – from birth to harvest – in 2019, Wester Ross Fisheries at the Ardessie A site had a stock mortality rate of 65.7 per cent, the highest in Scotland. In second worst place was The Scottish Salmon Company’s site at Maaey (East of Loch Uiskevagh) in the Outer Hebrides, which had a mortality rate of 52.9 per cent.
In the same analysis, Loch Duart at their Outer Bay site recorded a mortality rate of just 0.1 per cent, while the second lowest, Cooke Aquaculture in East Skelwick, had a mortality rate of 1.3 per cent.
Figures do vary according to the size of the operation and the different practices used, but they also illustrate that low mortality rates are being achieved by some operators.
Corin Smith, who is now the senior investigator for ISSF but was previously a data scientist for a number of FTSE and NASDAQ listed companies, explained the data in simple terms.
He said: ‘Imagine a sheep farmer has 100 lambs and puts them in a field to fatten them up for market. This is what salmon farmers do when they stock young salmon into their feedlots at sea. The numbers shown in the tables represent the percentage of these salmon that die on the salmon feedlot before the survivors are big enough to be taken to market.
‘I leave it to the public to decide whether the death rates on salmon farms in Scotland are
‘I leave it to the public to decide whether the death rates on salmon farms in Scotland are acceptable.’
acceptable. However, there are huge questions for RSPCA Assured, a charity based in England, that continues a blanket commercial endorsement for virtually all farmed salmon originating from feedlots in Scotland, including from those feedlots with exceptionally high mortality.’
The Scottish Salmon Company is seeking to expand its operations on Arran and is appealing the decision by North Ayrshire Council, which rejected its application to establish an open cage Atlantic salmon fish farm at Millstone Point. The appeal is currently being considered by the planning and environmental appeals division of the Scottish Government.
A spokesperson for The Scottish Salmon Company said: ‘Fish health and welfare is fundamental to responsible salmon farming and intrinsic to our operations but, like any farmer, we can face biological challenges with our stock. Fish health data, including these figures from 2019, is regularly reported and made publicly available through Marine Scotland and the SSPO.’
ISSF campaigns for salmon farms to be strictly regulated and calls on the Scottish Government to deliver a regulatory framework which will ensure an immediate and continued reduction of total emissions of sewage, chemicals, plastics, parasites and disease from the existing open cage salmon farming industry. It also proposes that the Scottish Government invests in communications, transport and facilities throughout Scotland to ensure the nation can compete globally in the production of closed containment farmed salmon and it calls for an end to all open cage salmon farming.