Geoff is still hooked after 40 years
One of Scottish Sea Farms’ top managers retires, but has no plans to give up on his love of fish
After 40 years of fish farming, Geoff Kidd is still as hooked as ever.
The father of three has just retired as one of Scottish Sea Farms’ top performing farm managers, but has no plans to give up on the finned varieties he has become so familiar with over the past four decades.
For he is hoping the painted plaster-cast fish he creates as an art form will become quite a catch.
Mr Kidd, who had a retirement party in Oban on Friday, has been with Scottish Sea Farms since spotting an advert for a salmon farm assistant at Loch Striven and has been in charge of its sea farm on Mull’s Loch Spelve since 1978.
Childhood holidays by the sea sparked an early love of the West Coast for the Geordie, who went on to train as a river biologist at Liverpool University before heading north to start his working life.
During his career, he has seen many changes, including a huge increase in productivity and the number of salmon being farmed.
‘Whenever I see people I’ve worked with over the years, they ask me if I’m still working there and I said they’d hear about it in The Oban Times when I retired. Well, here it is, my official retirement notice!’
Mr Kidd, who made his family home on Mull, hopes to spend his new-found free time on his fish art.
Years ago he began a natural history project with fish artist Edwin Pickett.
The plan was to catch every different type of fish in Loch Spelve, make moulds of them, produce casts and paint them to become part of a reference collection.
‘Sadly, Edwin has since died but he was a great fish artist and has greatly inspired me to keep working on it.
‘It’s incredibly time consuming to do the job well. Where it could go, I don’t know but I’d like to think there could be some recognition,’ he said.
Once the casts are made, they have to be painted. The fish are dead when the moulds are made but the fresher they are, the better the finished result is because muscle-tone can be captured, explained Mr Kidd, who has fully completed six fish so far.
‘Fish are fabulous. The colour changes that fish go through during their life-cycle are remarkable. Their shape changes too.
‘When they are fresh, you still get the muscle tone and see all the different shades and shimmering colours that are often invisible once they get on the fishmonger’s slab,’ he said.