Dead salmon at Lamlash fish farm – again

Over a quarter of a million salmon (267,114, to be exact) with a weight of 291,056 kg died during October 2011 at the Scottish Salmon Company’s fish farm, St Molios, in Lamlash Bay. This was the largest mass mortality case in one single month in the whole of Scotland for the period 2008-2012.

There is a wide spectrum of diseases that commonly affect caged fish. The Lamlash farm was decimated some years ago by an outbreak of Infectious Salmon Anaemia, causing the destruction of the entire stock, but the new outbreak is different. A Freedom of Information request from Marine Scotland and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA)
has forced an admission from the Scottish Salmon Company that during the first three months of 2012, fish in the St Molios cages were dying of Cardiomyopathy syndrome (CMS).

 A Norwegian veterinary report suggests that CMS is a viral disease that ‘often affects relatively large and mature fish’. It may be highly acute, with death suddenly occurring in apparently healthy fish, or take a chronic form with a moderate increase in deaths over several months. ‘A repeat outbreak is likely to occur in approximately 20% of the cases.’ Significantly, perhaps, CMS is strongly linked with stress, which could be why large fish are particularly affected. In an unproven hypothesis, could it be that their stress rises as they grow and their share of the limited water environment becomes proportionately less? Anyone who has walked over the duckboards round the St Molios cages will know that the largest fish barely have room to move. Unsurprisingly, the Norwegian study says, ‘Cases of significant loss of fish from CMS in connection with transport to harvest have been reported.’

So what can be done about it? Not a lot, it seems. ‘Preventative measures’ the study advises, should include ‘reducing the stress of fish in which CMS is suspected, identified or diagnosed.’ But if that can’t be done, then the suffering salmon should be killed.
‘Early harvest has been performed in a number of cases and may contribute to both reduce losses and contagion pressure.’

Don Staniford, the environmental campaigner who has visited Arran a number of times, runs a website called FishyLeaks that does exactly as its name suggests. It publishes facts on the handling of fish that are usually kept secret. You can find it on http://www.gaaia.org/fishyleaks
Staniford warns that the Marine Strategy Forum report, ‘Scotland’s Aquaculture Database’ will be officially launched at the end of July. This, he says, will be the Scottish Government’s attempt to prepare ‘a public relations offensive to clean up the poor image of Scotland’s foreign-owned salmon farming industry’. Describing the official version as ‘hogwash,’ he is publishing his own data on the FishyLeaks site. It highlights the fact that 2011 saw a ‘mort mountain’ of nearly 7 million farmed salmon, and that 2012 is shaping up to be worse. Over 2 million deaths of caged fish have been reported in the first three months alone.

The salmon that make it through to the supermarket packet will have been routinely dosed against sea lice with chemicals that include Deltamethrin, Azamethiphos, Teflubenzuron and Emamectin benzoate. The total range of diseases they may suffer from includes:
Ichthyobodo, Vibrio, Cardiomyopathy, Moritella vicosa, Yersinia ruckeri, Epitheliocystis, Salmonid alphavirus, Nephrocalcinosis, Tenacibaculum maritumum, Exophiala, Pasteurella skyensis, Nocardia, Pseudomonas, Flavobacterium, Gyrodactylus derjavinoides and Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis