Dream job, dream home, dream life... An island love story
Salmon producers’ analyst enjoys best of all worlds
Naomi Dempsey swapped her hectic life in Surrey for the beautiful landscapes of Orkney when she was studying for a master’s degree and loved the islands so much she has never left.
Today, the environmental analyst is settled on Hoy where she is about to buy a house after finding love with an Orcadian salmon farmer, now her husband of seven years.
But romance is not the only reason she has embraced island life. Naomi is passionate about the environment and six years ago landed her dream role as an analyst for Cooke Aquaculture, which operates around 40 of Scotland’s 200 fish farms that collectively produce more than 150,000 tonnes of salmon a year.
Naomi, 39, said: “I absolutely fell in love with Orkney. It was a complete contrast to Surrey which is far more populated and busy than it is here.
“I love my job. As salmon farming is such an integral part of the community here, it is easy to talk about in this kind of environment.
“Yet, in other areas of Scotland and the UK, there is so much about food production that people separate themselves from so it is harder to appreciate where food is coming from and how it is produced.”
The role of her team at Cooke is hugely important to the quality of fish produced at the company’s Hoy salmon farm. Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, Naomi was involved in sampling to assess the nature of the seabed and the marine environment.
She explained: “It is really about rearing the best quality salmon that we can.We need to have a good-quality environment to do that. We need to ensure we are not having a detrimental effect and to maintain the environment for the salmon to be healthy, so we have a strong, high-quality product. It is really important.”
The environmental analyst studies currents and different water depths, and their effect on how fish are reared and the environment they are farmed in. Naomi is also part of the team at Cooke Aquaculture that is looking into offshore salmon farming which, as she points out, is a “whole new ball game”.
“A lot of aquaculture is coastal-based in shallower water – less risk, basically – but when you move the equipment out to sea with higher wave heights and currents, there is a different way you have to approach it, but it is all essentially about minimising the risk to the environment during salmon production,” said Naomi.
When she is not helping to analyse and improve the environment for Scottish salmon – one of the UK’s biggest exports – you will find Naomi in the water as she enjoys free-diving for scallops.
Naomi, who completed her PhD at the University of Aberdeen, explained how she got hooked on her new hobby during lockdown.
“I love all seafood, especially shellfish like scallops and mussels. During lockdown we were limited as to what we could get on the island, and I had a strong craving for scallops.
“Then one day I was walking along the beach.There was one of the lowest tides I’d ever seen and I was able to pick scallops up along the shore.
“Then I discovered I could snorkel for them, so I did. I free-dived just a couple of metres down, in one breath, to pick them up from the seabed.
“Now my freezer is full of them. I pan-fry them with butter, two minutes on each side, and serve with some beautiful black pudding.”
Naomi feels a strong connection with the world around her, on both land and sea, and she continues to love every minute of island life off Scotland’s north-east coast.
She added: “I am sitting in my front room looking on to Scapa Flow. I go out walking every day with my dogs, I go swimming in the sea, and I forage for plants.
“Because we see people working in it, we really appreciate how important it is to maintain and sustain the world around us, and it is critical for me to have that interaction.”