And nasty news on sea lice

In the same issue of EU Fish News, 13 June 2012, comes a report on sea lice in fish farms that makes disturbing reading.

The Salmon and Trout Association (S&TA) has analysed the reports of the Scottish Government’s Fish Health Inspectorate between June and December 2011. They show that over 30% of the marine farms inspected were breaching the industry’s own Code of Good Practice on sea lice standards. At 17% of sites, there was actual resistance to sea-lice treatment, coupled with lack of efficacy when this was attempted.

Hughie Campbell-Adamson, Chairman of S&TA Scotland, said, ‘These figures explain why the industry has argued so vehemently against the publication of farm-specific weekly sea lice counts. The case for legislative action is now cast-iron.’

This summer, there are already reports of very high densities of sea lice larvae in the coastal margins of parts of the north-west Highlands. Juvenile sea trout netted for monitoring purposes shows that they are already carrying alarmingly high lice burdens, at levels which Campbell-Adamson says are likely to prove fatal.

The S&TA believes that the fish farming industry can thrive alongside healthy self-supporting wild fish populations, but only if existing fish farms in sensitive locations are relocated away from the wild salmon rivers. Ultimately, the industry should move into closed-containment systems that create a ‘biological separation’ between wild and farmed fish. Only by doing so can polluting discharges to the sea be controlled.

Paul Knight, CEO at the S&TA, points out that the salmon farming industry currently discharges ‘waste food, faeces, toxic chemicals, huge numbers of parasitic sea lice and escaped fish’ into the marine environment as though assuming that it is theirs to exploit.

Guy Linley-Adams, Solicitor to the S&TA Aquaculture Campaign, raised the question of ‘industry intransigence’ coupled with inadequate food labelling of Scottish salmon. He said, ‘The big supermarkets need to realise that the impact of poorly-managed fish farms on the Scottish marine environment is not something they can safely or legally gloss over any longer.’

Meanwhile, we might well point out to our own Brodick Co-op that the smoked mackerel sold in packs of two or three are well below the size of mature fish, sometimes barely six inches long. How can a species maintain itself if its immature juveniles are taken when they are below breeding age?