The site on an uncharacteristically calm day. Image by Arthur Campbell.

Offshore, on song

The successful first cycle at Marine Harvest Scotland’s most exposed site to date, off the island of Muck, helps to explain the company’s ambition to increase production at new, high energy sites.

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“It’s a relief to get the fish away,” reflects site manger Sean Anderson, “especially after such a long wet, windy winter, but we’re really, really pleased with how things have gone.”

Given that Sean’s last role was managing the company’s Hellisay site, off Barra – a location that was seen as being pretty extreme – the fact that he refers to Muck as “totally new territory altogether” suggests that you need a stout pair of sea legs to successfully farm salmon in such conditions.

But Sean is quick to praise the equipment at his disposal.

“We thought conditions would be similar to Hellisay, but it was a completely different ball game – exposed to the wind from all directions,” he explains. “Thankfully, though, we had the right equipment for the job. The company threw everything at it – ten 120m Fusion pens; a 400 tonne concrete SeaMate barge from Gaelforce; a Mørenot Flexilink mooring system, and a brand new Dutch-built landing craft."

Unsurprisingly, given the exposed nature of the site and the ferocious weather experienced recently, there were a fair few days that the crew were confined to their shore base, but this didn’t seem to adversely affect the fish.

“We could do a lot of the feeding and monitoring from the shore,” says Sean, “and had to come up with ways to make the most of our time when we were unable to get to the site.”

And the payback for the challenging working conditions is excellent growing conditions for the fish, which arrived as 90-100g smolts from the company’s RAS unit at Lochailort and averaged 6kg apiece by the time of the last harvest in February.

“The water quality is phenomenal,” Sean enthuses, “with visibility at 10-13m every day; the growth rate was excellent, the fish were feeding non-stop from the time they went in the water; and, most importantly, there were no lice at all through the cycle – no peaks at all.”

Sean is not content to rest on his laurels, however, and thinks that there is room for improvement.

“Where Marine Harvest is going [to increasingly exposed locations] is definitely the way forward, and the next cycle on Muck – when we’ll be able to concentrate on the fish – should be even better,” he predicts.