Salmon farms in northwest Scotland are benefiting from using locally-caught wrasse to remove sea lice from their stocks.
Gilpin Bradley, managing director of Wester Ross Fisheries, told national newspaper The Scotsman that finding the natural solution to the sea lice challenge worked was “the single biggest advance to ever be made in salmon farming.”
To clean its salmon, the firm uses ballan wrasse caught in creels in the waters around Loch Broom, near Ullapool. It is limited to 250 creels to make sure it does not overfish the area and only takes medium-sized fish.
Its wrasse are put into the salmon pens at a ratio of about one for every 100 salmon.
The most recent Scottish Fish Farm Production Survey, produced by Marine Scotland Science, reported that 189,707 metric tons (MT) of salmon were harvested in 2017, representing an increase of 16.5 percent or 26,890 MT.
Atlantic salmon farming is worth more than GBP 1.8 billion (USD 2.3 billion, EUR 2 billion) to the U.K. economy, with overseas sales generating revenues of around GBP 600 million (USD 764.1 million, EUR 667.7 million).
Photo courtesy of Wester Ross
