Anti-salmon farming groups and media outlets in the U.K. have recently decried the number of fish mortalities recorded on fish farms in Scotland, but the country's aquaculture industry is defending its practices.
The Scottish Parliament's Rural Affairs and Islands Committee has been conducting an inquiry into how Scotland’s salmon farming has changed since a 2018 report raised a number of environmental concerns.
Cooke Scotland Seawater Manager David Brown told the committee recently the country's fish-farming operations are prioritizing animal welfare.
“We do not want dead fish on our sites at all. We do not seek to have mortalities. We want to give the best care we can to our fish at all times. That goes for absolutely everybody. Nobody wants to go in the morning to take dead fish out of a cage. It's not good for the companies, it’s not good for staff, it's simply not a nice job, and we'd much rather not do it,” Brown said. “An awful lot is said about reacting to dead fish. We don't want these fish to die in the first place; we'd rather get them better before that ever happens. That's what we seek to do.”
Brown said Cooke’s internal monitoring program includes weekly physical samplings in cages on every site, and this gives the company an effective overview of gill health. The firm also employs constant monitoring of sea lice numbers and feeding behaviors, among other health metrics.
Giving a broader view of the industry’s fish welfare focus, Bakkafrost Scotland Head of Health Kimberley McKinnell said fundamental changes have been made to practices over the past five years, moving the industry more into proactive and preventative means of looking after fish, rather than solely taking reactive measures.
“This is a complete change in how we manage the health of our animals,” she said. “We're using more novel technologies for monitoring the fish.”
McKinnell said the industry is being more proactive to ensure mortalities don't occur by implementing ...
