Dave McEwan
Marine Harvest: 1978-present
After he left school, McEwan wanted to stay in the area but found job opportunities few and far between. ‘I spent ages searching for work’, he recalls. ‘Then, during one of my interviews at the Job Centre, I told them that I was interested in fishing and wanted to work outdoors. They told me about a new course in aquaculture, a block release programme with five weeks in college and five weeks’ industry training.
‘I was accepted, and as part of my industry training I had a placement with Marine Harvest, at the hatchery at Invergarry. This was in 1977. My main duties included: feeding – there were automated feeders in the hatchery – taking out the dead and grading. ‘We used the old Danish box graders’, he explains, ‘a basic plastic, sloping bar grader inside a box. I believe they are still using them for wrasse. The smolts were grown in the hatchery and then transferred directly to sea.’
McEwan started officially with Marine Harvest in 1978, and was moved to the new, state-of-the-art hatchery at Inchmore, where he remained for ten years. ‘There were a lot of changes during my time at Inchmore’, he recalls. ‘We started with a flow-through system – in the hatchery as well – and in my time we changed it to a recirculating system, to help egg development. We also put a heating system in the outside tanks to boost growth and then moved to covering the tanks with a polytunnel for photo-period production.
‘We used the old sand drum filters, and then we introduced high oxygenation systems’, he continues. ‘We’d get a side stream loop off the main supply, feed it through an oxygenation system and then back into the line. These innovations mainly came from looking at what was happening elsewhere in the industry – we were always looking for ways to improve.’
In 1988 McEwan became freshwater area manager. ‘At that time there were two freshwater area managers’, he says. ‘One looked after the hatcheries, the other the lochs. I looked after the lochs, which included Loch Shiel and Loch Garry. There were subsequent restructurings which divided up the hatcheries and lochs to create cross-functional area managers.
‘The main change came in the late ‘90s when the area manager positions were reduced and the role became multi-functional, with responsibilities for sea water, freshwater, engineering and health’, explains McEwan. ‘It was around then that I became involved in the sea water production, responsible for sites in Lewis, Harris and the northern mainland. I’d only ever been involved with sea water from a distance, so it was a steep learning curve.’
As McEwan recalls, the main challenges during his earlier days in freshwater were the
survivability of the eggs. ‘There were a number of mortalities back then’, he says. ‘At the time we were doing sea water and freshwater stripping, but there was a period when we were predominantly sea water stripping. This probably caused a lot of contamination, with sea water and blood in the eggs. The quality of the eggs was probably not the best as well.’
Another challenge was getting the fish big enough. ‘I recently looked back at some of my old charts, and back then we were really proud of a 30 gramme smolt in June or July’, he laughs. ‘Now, at the top end, we can produce smolts that are 200/250 grammes. This change is down to a combination of things, including: better feeding; better hatcheries; better stock; better husbandry; and years of experience and development.’
In 2005 McEwan’s position in sea water production was made redundant, so he spent a couple of years as Estates and Operations Manager. ‘We had a number of leases throughout the countryside’, he says. ‘At that time, when we moved out of a site, if it was linked to a number of different leases, sometimes they weren’t cancelled. My job was to tidy these up, as well as speaking to landowners and agents.
‘After doing that I was Purchasing Manager, which involved everything from outsourcing store supplies to major capital expenditure – negotiating with suppliers and making purchases, obviously trying to obtain as big a discount as we possibly could. I was also involved in a global group, looking at areas in which we had commonalities and using our global strength to make purchases.’
McEwan is back in freshwater now, respon- sible for five freshwater lochs that up until five years ago produced 100 per cent of Marine Harvest’s smolts. ‘My role is to co-ordinate production in line with our strategic plan, taking parr from the hatcheries and growing them on to smolts, which are then transferred to sea’, he explains. ‘I am also responsible for logistics – ensuring that the parr are safely transferred from the hatcheries and the smolts to the sea. We use a lorry and well boat combination’, he continues. ‘With the exception of a contract we inherited in the Western Isles, we haven’t used helicopters in the last fifteen or so years.’
The method of getting salmon from the egg to the freshwater lochs prior to smoltifica-
Marine Harvest is always pushing you to better yourself and gain experience”
tion is a complex process. ‘First, we receive eyed eggs from Norway, disinfect them and then lay them out in incubators’, explains McEwan. ‘At this point they are around 375/400 degree-days – they hatch at around 450 degree-days, after which the dead and unhatched are removed. The natural instinct of the alevins is to burrow down, so the incubators are lined with a substrate, a bit like astroturf.
‘The alevins have a yolk sac attached to them, from which they gain nutrients’, he continues. ‘When the yolk sac is almost gone the alevins are transferred into tanks in the hatchery and artificial feed is introduced. At this point they weigh around 0.2 grammes. As they grow bigger they are thinned out into available tanks, and when the tanks are full, the next thinning out is into the freshwater loch sites – usually at the end of May, at which point they weigh around seven or eight grammes.’
In order to ensure a consistent supply of salmon all year round, the timing of the smolts going to sea is staggered. ‘Q4 fish are those that are put into sea water in the same year that they hatched’, explains McEwan. ‘Q1 fish are those put in just after the year end, and Q2s are a traditional spring smolt. This year, for the first time in a long while, we also have Q3s, which are a very early Q4 – instead of going out in early October, they go out as smolts in August.’
McEwan has just completed his 37 years’ service, and in that time has seen a number of changes within Marine Harvest. ‘Perhaps the biggest change has been in salaries’, he says. ‘When I started in 1978 I was on £1,960 a year. Nowadays, people who start with the company earn almost ten times that; people are definitely much better looked after now.
‘The training and health and safety awareness now is phenomenal’, he adds. ‘The quality of training our apprentices get, for example, is first class. When I am recruiting for a new position I tend to find in the majority of cases that the applicants from within Marine Harvest have the best experience and qualifications for the job. Of course, a business of this size has a massive support network, which includes Human Resources, Occupational Health and Health and Safety – we had none of this when I first started.’
Looking back, McEwan feels very lucky to have started working for Marine Harvest when he did. ‘I got in at the right time, because getting the job was relatively easy, and I managed to rise from technician to an area manager’, he says. ‘Every time I’ve felt like I needed a new challenge, something has come up, and I’ve had opportunities to work in different parts of the business. I’ve also been on many trips, including Chile, Norway, Estonia and China. It’s been really exciting, and I was always encouraged by the company, which is always pushing you to better yourself and gain knowledge and experience elsewhere.’