Fish farms research and new boat are not enough

How kind of Scottish Sea Farms to invest in research and a new boat to enable better ‘treatment for gill health issues' (The Oban Times, December 5). If only they didn't put the poor fish in conditions which create these serious problems in the first place.

So before you cheer too loudly, think about where all these medicines end up – in our seas or on your dinner plate?

It's true ‘fish welfare and survival' needs to improve. Fellow farmers *Mowi lost 737,000 salmon – that's 2,600 tonnes – from local farms in a three-month period recently, due to algal blooms and fish health problems.

Scottish Sea Farms themselves reported 47 instances of fish deaths, totalling 356,082 fish during 2017, but by no means all of these were from gill health issues. There are other concerns.

‘Water quality' may be ‘monitored daily', but then it surely needs to be with so many treatment chemicals, waste fish food and fish excrement going from the farms to the sea. There wasn't really a problem until the farms produced one. Admittedly, the more dangerous substances are restricted, but not ‘harmless' ones like hydrogen peroxide (that's bleach, to you and me), which is unregulated and can be used in large quantities.

Other countries (Denmark and Canada for instance) are taking serious action over these problems, such as phasing out open cage farms. Maybe we should examine why they are doing this. *(Mowi data quoted from Ian Roberts, director of communications for Mowi Scotland; Scottish Sea Farms data from FOI to Scottish Government via Marine Scotland).

Dennis Archer, Gallanach Road, Oban.