Nothing to hide

WHEN Norway announced its latest ‘traffic light’ decisions for salmon farmers this month, it included red zones for the first time. The system, launched in 2017 to link production capacity to sea lice risk, allows for expansion in the industry but can also restrict growth, as it has done now for some regions. In Scotland, there is no such regime, but ministers here are not complacent about sea lice levels and have committed to reducing lice thresholds and introducing legislation requiring all marine farms to report weekly lice numbers.

Scotland’s salmon farmers are not complacent either about sea lice and continue to invest millions of pounds in control measures. And, as Ronnie Soutar reports in the introduction to our special sea lice feature, cooperation between companies and the sharing of expertise and equipment is helping the sector address its number one challenge. This collaboration, as Ronnie says, is heartening.

Our visit last month to Mowi’s Inchmore hatchery revealed further efforts by farmers to safeguard the health of their stocks, by producing bigger and more robust smolts. And then, at

Loch Alsh, Mowi farm manager Kendal Hunter took us to see a Thermolicer treatment in action. This kind of access is of course welcomed by journalists but it is also very much in the salmon industry’s interests to be ever more transparent.