by Anne MacLennan
Skye’s Scottish Salmon Think-Tank (SST-T) recently joined the Coastal Communities Network, a community-led network of local groups ‘committed to the preservation and safeguarding of Scotland’s coastal and marine environments’. Formed in 2017 with just eight groups, Coastal Communities Network welcomes SST-T as the 31st member. Special interests within CCN include aquaculture, marine litter, and marine restoration. The SST-T educates about, and campaigns against, open-net salmon farming.
The Scottish Salmon Farming industry is economically and culturally significant, having grown dramatically over the past few decades. Market pressures, however, mean that ‘Scottish farmers must balance the costs of sustainable practices with the need to remain economically viable’. And there’s the rub.
A 2018 Parliamentary report on Scottish salmon farming highlighted several environmental and welfare concerns, with unacceptably lax regulation and enforcement of the industry, and called for ‘meaningful action’.
Three years later, the horror story of Loch Creran, told in this video, led to investigations by NatureScot and Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).
Findings from extensive evidence gathered last year were published by the Scottish Government in January to follow up on the 2018 report. Many of the 65 recommendations were ‘urgent’ or of high priority, including the collection and disposal of waste, and careful assessment before siting farms in Marine Protected Areas. CCN’s views were considered and acknowledged, with concerns around fish welfare, sea lice, and unacceptably high mortality figures highlighted as significant issues.
Aquaculture is a major cause of coastal and marine litter around Skye as documented by Loughborough University. Fifty years ago, academics warned of plastic and other rubbish being brought to Skye by sea and their recent film illustrates isolated beauty spots such as Camasunary ‘carpeted in plastics and discarded fishing equipment’. And not just Skye. Argyll’s flotsam cow Tarbh na muraig (pictured) created from beach rubbish, looks suspiciously well clad in fish farm debris, while plastic waste from construction and repair of salmon farm cages on Loch Creran warranted a SEPA Environmental Event Report.
Despite these concerns, open-net salmon farming looks set to expand, with new developments such as placing the cages further offshore to increase production capacity, taking advantage of deeper waters and stronger currents. This could mean more aquaculture debris collecting in one of the ocean ‘garbage patches’ instead of washing up on local shores.
Source: National Geographic
Garbage patches are great masses of rubbish, predominantly plastic, found swirling about in the calm, stable centres of many of the world’s ocean gyres. While the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be the best known, smaller bodies of water, such as the Mediterranean and North Seas, are now also developing garbage patches along heavily trafficked shipping lanes.
Source: National Geographic