[Hamish Young]

This morning I have had a few hours to watch some stuff on the internet (steady.....) thanks to our 4 year old who decided that 04:50 was an entirely acceptable time to wake up the house 

So in amongst the 'must catch up with that online' list was the website of twin brothers Will and Al Peake.  I met these enthusiastic guys at an SGAIC gathering of instructors earlier this year and in conversation they made mention of a visit to the Lochy where, many many years ago, I was a Ghillie, occasional bailiff and hatchery designer/builder etc. That hatchery is long since mothballed (or so I believe) and has been replaced with something altogether more ambitious. I digress, watch the video.
It's interesting and the views expressed by Jon Gibb about what they release and why is refreshingly honest.
 


Lots of other  good stuff on their website and the videos hosted on Vimeo are, I think, excellent.
Enjoy.

H

[Rob Brownfield]

Extremely surprised so see them in partnership with "the enemy".  Not sure what to make of that to tell the truth.

[James Laraway]

im in the same boat Rob - i would not be giving the salmon farming industry any credit for this as they only need a hatchery and to treat the smolts ( with chemicals) due to the fact the salmon farms are there creating the issue in the first place.

A bit like a fly tipper dumping stuff on your drive at night and then returning in the morning to offer to help clear it up , for a price,  and then expecting you to say thanks

[Derek Roxborough]

I worked for 5 years in a hatchery so I know how they work and the Philosophy( we are the saviour of the salmon) why are the SNP giving so much to the Industry and nothing to help the wild salmon? Derek Roxborough

[Hamish Young]

Extremely surprised so see them in partnership with "the enemy".  Not sure what to make of that to tell the truth.

Interesting.

Whilst I recognise the reasons for categorising the Salmon farmers as 'the enemy' the devils advocate in me would suggest that a succession of governments have failed to seize on the importance of or act on the scientific evidence (about the environmental damage that this industry has caused) which has in turn fostered ideal conditions for someone (Salmon farmers, by and large) to continue doing - more or less - as they wish and take advantage.

To my mind that makes the successive governments and government  bodies tasked with administering, regulating and supervising the fish farming industry 'the enemy' (as it is with those organisations and people that the 'battles' must be fought) rather than the fish farmers themselves. That doesn't mean they fish farmers are not culpable - far from it, in fact - more they are the under regulated weapons dealers and they have more than taken advantage of that.

There have been some steps in different parts of Scotland that have seen the Salmon farming industry liaising more closely with the District Salmon Fishery Boards and the Fisheries Trusts, the Lochy system is one that has benefited from various initiatives and there are others.

Personally, and as has been well recorded on this forum and elsewhere,  I am no fan of the Salmon farming industry. But I am a pragmatist and I think there has to be some neutral ground here where fish farmers and 'fishers' can and must work together.
The River Lochy Association could not hope to do all it has done  without fairly major support from the subject matter experts in fish production that are the Salmon farmers.
What would be rather do.... deal with and engage with the industry in an effort to move forwards or remain entrenched in a battle that cannot be won by words alone

Certainly there needs to be more action taken by our government. They would argue, of course, that their concerns over Salmon populations has led us to the categorisation of our rivers in an effort to  ensure viable populations of Salmon and therefore their conservation efforts are there to be seen etc etc.

Agreed this action will help but it's a wee bit late for many West coast Sea Trout populations.

There have been greater efforts made by government - in fairness - to clean up the industry. I am strongly in the camp that thinks this greater interaction between Salmon farmers and DSFBs/Trusts etc isn't an entirely altruistic one on the part of the Salmon farmers either

H

[Rob Brownfield]

So, lets look at it slightly differently.

I live next to a farm. My neighbour has cattle and he keeps them in a very small shed up the hill from the house. They are actually pretty tightly packed in meaning they are prone to disease. But that's ok, because he feeds them on heavily medicated pellets. Some of those pellets roll down the hill to my house and we have real issues with our chickens eating them. The chickens normally die.

Another issue is that because the animals are so packed in, they are often in pretty poor condition and its not unusual for him to slaughter all the cattle and "start again".  The bodies are buried nearby and for some reason, some of the diseases re-infect the new batch of animals. Seems a risk he can take because the government gives him a bit of money to buy more.

In addition, the slurry from the shed, when it rains, runs down the hill and seeps into the water table. This means our drinking water is contaminated with bacteria and pesticid3es/medication and we are often quite ill. The smell is quite bad too.

We have complained, but we are told that the farmer is abiding by the rules.

But to be fair to the farmer, he pays us £100 a month and gives us a couple of pheasants at Christmas so we just replace the chickens until the next batch dies. Of course, there is the issue of the drinking water, but hey, we get the free pheasants so its not all bad.


Of course the above scenario is false, our neighbour would be out of business over night if he ran his farm like that. But even reading Marine Harvests own reports, that's pretty much the model they work on. Even the "certified" cages are over stocked. medications are dosed without consideration to the wider environment, polluted water is left to swill about and millions of salmon are either slaughtered or escape.

I put the word "enemy" in quotation marks because I was not sure if they were or not in this case.

The more I think about it, the more absurd the entire industry becomes. I agree, the government is at fault as well. I would not say successive ones though. Salmon farming is THE backbone of Scottish food exports with more farms recently been given the green light despite the Scottish Governments own watchdog telling them enough is enough and warning of dire problems. Fish farming has massively increased under an SNP government, but not for Scottish/UK companies.

The fact the word "organic" has been tacked on to some Scottish Salmon just makes the whole thing laughable.

No, you cannot pollute with one hand and dish out money on the other. Whilst they may be paying to replace some of the lost salmon, what about  all the other fish, animals, plants and crustaceans that are directly affected by the sea cages? Nah, its not on.

(Had a hard day at work!! lol)

[Peter Davidson]

Just grand to see the open mindedness - take a step back  and admire what you have become.

[Rob Brownfield]

Just grand to see the open mindedness - take a step back  and admire what you have become.

People are entitled to there own opinions. No place for insults.

[Peter Davidson]

People are entitled to there own opinions. No place for insults.

Hmmmmm - interested to read that reaction. No matter how hard I try I cannot find insult in my comment. 

[Derek Roxborough]

there was  a time when some of the Salmon sites were using Ant-biotics as prophylaxis, using more of these than was being used for childhood diseases in Africa, the Hatchery I worked at bought Antibiotics by the Kilo, it was added to the feed ,again for Prophylaxis, may be the Industry has cleaned up its act , but when the Early Antilice treatments were used the sites had to keep Atropine as an Antidote, we were on specific first aid course when we were told this, the early treatments were organo phospates based on poultry treatments, and we are all entitled to our opinions, after I worked in the industry , I w asn't swayed by the hype, they had published  an Angling Video in the 80's to show the luxury status of Scottish salmon, at a time when  Haddock was more expensive, you could get farmed salmon for about 90p /lb. haddock was £1-80, this was at the fishmongers in the Victorian Market in Inverness, but the SG thinks that the industry will cure all ills,  I won't hold my breath Derek Roxborough

[Hamish Young]

How many of you have watched the video  in my initial post

H

[Rob Brownfield]

How many of you have watched the video  in my initial post

H

Three times now. What I get is that Mr Gibb clearly stats that he has to put 50,000 smolts into the river, that they have to be smolts because otherwise the sea-lice from the local aquaculture sites have a negative impact, and that they have to (in some years) dose the smolts with SLICE and that the list of companies he reads out are helping fund a hatchery that would "possibly" not be needed (certainly not on the scale they are) if they were not polluting and spreading sea lice in the first place.

The catch returns for the Lochy available on FishPal show no real significant increase in numbers caught, and with last years figures missing but a statement of "salmon runs collapsed" for 2017 suggests a low catch return. We are talking an average of 139 salmon per year reported for the last 16 years. 2016 was slightly above average, 2017 possibly well below average.

I understand aquaculture is here to stay, but we should not be painting the likes of Marine Harvest as the hero in this landscape. Just do a quick search, they are definitely the villain.

It reminds me of a story about the weapons company, Kalashnikov. To "improve" their image around the world, they came up with an idea in the 90's that they would supply free field dressing to hospitals in war torn countries. Take away the weapon, you don't need the dressing.

[James Laraway]

I watched the rest of it this morning - as i stopped yestarday when they were thanking the salmon farming industry. So, i went for it again today.

it is informative and interesting - particulalry the stocking of smolts.

however......

saying " we can only do this thanks to our funders..." who are the companies causing the issue in the first place does stick in the throat a little.

I know they cant 'slag them off' as other wise the funding will stop and the whole thing will cease but giving out 'thanks ' to marine harvest, the feed makers, net makers and sea lice medication owners rather takes away from the point that they are the prime cause of the issue in the first place dont you think ?

Its a bit like you going into your local, and getting beaten up. Then you go to the hospital and the doctor treating your wounds is the person who gave you the beating  in the first place, then he expects you to say thanks publically for patching you up. Your still badly scared but he still thinks he has done you a favour depspite the harm he did in the first place !

does that make sense ?

[Derek Roxborough]

I watched some of it , I found it very similar to the Video I referred to in my post, the Hatchery I worked at supplied Smolts to Marine harvest, we used South Esk stock and Mowie stock from Norway I went down tom Glasgow to collect the Ova from The airport, our Hatchery ( which was Norwegian based) also had an agreement with the local angling club to supply fry for restocking, this stocking was widely used in the area, from Kernsary to Shieldaig, the Hatchery supplied over 100 thousand fry in the area, some of these may have been Mowie stock, so what price native salmon? we also hatched ova for Marine harvest from the Invermoriston site , I have no Idea what stock these were from, another interesting point, how many farm escapees was there last year? also how many salmon had been killed last year? how can the industry afford these problems and stay Viable with out funding ? Derek Roxborough

[Rob Brownfield]

also how many salmon had been killed last year? how can the industry afford these problems and stay Viable with out funding ? Derek Roxborough

I wanted to put some facts and figures down, but getting information on Scottish farms is very difficult. Why? Because ScotGov have refused to release details. They have constantly applied for an exemption from freedom of information requests, the last one I can find being November last year. There are 14 listed that I can see. Although the exemptions have been denied every time, they are still refusing to divulge mortality rates.

"As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deawith your request under FOISA."

However, I have a copy of the SAMS report (Review of the Environmental Impacts of Salmon Farming in Scotland) here.

Some interesting figures:

"An average of 146,000 cultivated adult salmon are reported to enter the sea from salmon farms each year in Scotland. The number is likely to be under-reported."

On the Scottish parliament website, tucked well away, I found this little statement.

 "In 2014, the last year for which survival can be calculated, the survival rate from smolt input to harvest decreased to 73.3%."

So that's a mortality rate of 26.7%. of smolt to adult fish. No mention of Ova to smolt, although I did find figures of 49,370,000 ova imported from Norway in 2016 (last year figures seem to be available).

I found the production figure for 2014 for harvested salmon of 171,000 tonnes.

That equates to a mortality "tonnage" of around 45,500 tonnes! (26.7% of 216,500 total production)

That's a lot of fish!!

I hope that answers your question on numbers.

[Hamish Young]

I'm going to lock this topic now as there's a real chance we'll continue off on a tangent which will, very simply, result in too much wordy ping pong. Emotive topic, but not the route I intended for this thread 

I understand aquaculture is here to stay, but we should not be painting the likes of Marine Harvest as the hero in this landscape. Just do a quick search, they are definitely the villain.

If anyone here does portray such a picture I shall have 'strong words' for them which may contain many very strong and very colourful metaphors....

it is informative and interesting - particularly the stocking of smolts.

Thank you James  For me this is for me is the key thing about the whole video, it is a strong break-away from standard practice and something Roger Barnes (the late River Lochy manager) and I lobbied for having seen in successive years thousand upon thousands of juvenile (and not so juvenile) fish getting wiped out by some idiot forgetting to release (or stopping the release of) compensation water from the Mucomir Dam  and then finding Sea Trout in the estuary covered head to toe and being eaten alive by sea lice infestations 

If, for the moment, we can blinker ourselves to the support 'mechanism', what they're doing on the Lochy hatchery (which is actually at Glenfinnan.... and many, many miles from the Lochy....) is probably close to what we should be doing in many, many other river and loch systems around Scotland now:  by-pass the freshwater habitat aspect of stocking Salmon, get them to smolt and get them to sea.

In the meantime folks, the other videos done by the brothers Peake are well worth watching.
In some cases, try not to drool 

H