Scotland’s salmon-farming industry has overcome a lot of challenges over the past few years, but more work is needed to ensure it remains sustainable and prioritizes animal health and welfare into the future, according to Scotland Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform, and Islands Mairi Gougeon.
Addressing a Rural Affairs and Islands Committee of the Scottish Parliament, which is conducting an inquiry into the industry, Gougeon emphasized that the sector recognizes the need for sustainable operations.
“We know that the sector can only be a truly sustainable success story if economic growth goes hand in hand with positive outcomes for Scotland's communities and Scotland's natural environment,” she said. “Aquaculture is an important component of Scotland's blue economy, with farmed salmon being the U.K.'s leading food export.”
Gougeon’s presentation on 13 November concluded the evidence-gathering stage of the committee’s inquiry, which is analyzing whether the nation’s salmon-farming industry has made any progress on its sustainability since 2019 when the Rural Economy & Connectivity Committee (RECC) said that urgent action was needed to address fish health and environmental challenges in the sector.
“I am pleased with the significant progress that we have made on our aquaculture commitments since the RECC report in 2019, [achieved] despite the emergency response demands that have resulted from the management of Covid-19 and the exit from the E.U.,” Gougeon said. “Now, we have a broad agenda on which we are generating momentum, and we are prioritizing action across key areas such as protection of the environment and biodiversity, consenting community benefit, business, and animal health and welfare.”
Such progress, she said, is best exemplified through work that has been done to protect the environment, including the Scottish government’s Wild Salmon Strategy and implementation plan for 2023 through 2028.
Additionally, in February this year, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) implemented a new Sea Lice Regulatory Framework for wild salmon, and a new framework for protecting sea trout populations will start in March 2025.
“The introduction of this framework marks a really crucial milestone, and I think [this] highlights the progress that has been made since the recommendations of the previous parliamentary inquiries,” Gougeon said.
She said all salmon farms will be transferred onto an environmental framework by the end of this year.
“The sector is investing heavily to address fish health challenges, which are complex and changeable. We have made progress to introduce mortality reporting, sea lice reporting, and we have lowered sea lice intervention levels,” she said. “There has also been progress in relation to science and innovation, and we continue to invest in developing our science and evidence base. I do recognize that, as ever, there’s always more work to do, but I hope that the committee will acknowledge and welcome the significant progress that has been made.”
Questioned on fish health and welfare – specifically the salmon-farming industry’s mortality levels and the 17.5 million fish deaths recorded in 2022 – Gougeon said that number, which represented approximately 25 percent of the overall biomass two years ago, “is not where we want it to be” and “not where industry would want those figures to be either.”
Gougeon also acknowledged that the mortality percentage rate in Scotland is higher than other salmon-farming nations and that mortalities are an extremely complex issue to address due to algal blooms, micro jellyfish, climate change, and more.
Hazel Bartels, the senior delivery lead for the Scottish government’s Marine Directorate Aquaculture Program, presented alongside Gougeon and echoed the issue’s complexity, saying it was not as simple as looking to solutions implemented by other nations.
“It’s absolutely true that both harmful algal blooms and micro jellyfish have been impactful in the Faroes and in Norway. There have been interconnections within the science and interconnections within companies themselves in terms of how to manage that,” Bartels said. “Everybody is grappling with similar kinds of challenges, but there are also environmental differences around [Scotland’s] shallower and warmer waters.”
The committee also asked whether there’s an ideal biomass to stem mortality rates.
Charles Allan, who is the head of the Scottish government’s Fish Health Inspectorate and also presented to the committee, said in terms of welfare indicators there is a change that takes place when the stocking density is at about 22 kilograms per cubic meter, which is why companies farm below that.
“A lot of the mortality is currently driven by either direct or indirect environmental factors, and those environmental factors will interact with the fish regardless of the biomass,” he said. “There is no direct relationship at the densities that we are currently farming fish in Scotland between density and mortality.”
Though the industry has struggled with mortalities, Gougeon highlighted salmon farming’s economic importance to Scotland and that it continues to be an essential part of the U.K.’s import/export industry.
She said that in 2022, salmon farming production generated GBP 324 million (USD 413 million, EUR 388.5 million) of gross value added (GVA) worth, and that it supports around 12,000 jobs across farming operations and the supply chain.
“I don’t think there is a constituency across Scotland that does not have some element of either an aquaculture business or its wider supply chain within it,” she said.
