Sustainable Fish Farming: 4-Day Study Tour of Fish Farms in the Scottish Highlands

Gorsten Salmon Farm, Fort Williams (Marine Harvest Scotland)

This week our MSc class had the incredible opportunity to participate in a 4-day study tour of fish farms along the west coast of Scotland. We stayed in Fort Williams, at the base of Ben Nevis in the Scottish Highlands, and while the temperate never got above 0^o C (it was closer to -10!), the experience was nevertheless invaluable!

Due to the terrible weather conditions (extreme cold and snow), we were late leaving Stirling the first day and only arrived in Fort Williams after dark. The second day we started early, driving 2 hours to Ardtoe Marine Labs, a commercial and research facility that often collaborates with the Institute at Stirling. Here, the farm manager, Jim Treasurer, gave us an overview lecture of the work that the facility is doing: broodstock programs for halibut, cod, haddock, turbot, and sole; experiments with wrasse to combat sea lice in salmon cages; and the culture of sea urchins, oysters, and seaweeds for integrated aquaculture systems. After hearing about the work, we took a tour of the facility.

Our next stop was Lochailort Salmon Farm, a small research site owned and operated by Marine Harvest Scotland where feed trails are carried out. After that, we headed down the road to the Lochailort Smolt Facility, where Marine Harvest hatches salmon eggs and grows them to smolts before shipping them to their ocean on-growing sites.

Wednesday found us split into two groups: in the morning, our group went to the Blar Mhor Marine Harvest Processing Plant, where salmon grown in Scotland are processed and shipped all over the world. The fish are delivered freshly killed, and in the processing plant they are gutted, cleaned, and put on ice in boxes to be shipped out. In the afternoon, we went to the Gorsten Salmon Farm, a Marine Harvest sea-cage site. There, we took a boat out to the cages and saw them grading fish: this process separates fish into different size-classes to make harvesting easier and more effective.

Upon returning to the hotel, we received two lectures: the first was from Douige Hunter, the technical Services Manager of Marine Harvest Scotland, and covered overviews of the Marine Harvest production cycle, as well as the state of the global salmon market. The second was from Dave Cockerill, a veterinarian with Marine Harvest, who spoke about fish diseases and welfare issues.

Overall the trip was a resounding success: we got to see a wide variety of aquaculture systems and operations, we had a chance to talk in-depth with several industry people, and we received lots of different perspectives from different players along the salmon value chain. Plus, no one in the class got frostbite!!