New escape incidents

Siri Elise Dybdal

According to the Scottish Government’s statistics on breaches of containment on fish farms in Scotland for 2013, one escape incident took place on 8 May at the Loch Earn trout farm in Tayside, owned by Dawnfresh. A hole in the net due to bad weather conditions had caused the incidence. The fish suspected to have escaped were of 200g size.

There were also two breaches of containment on salmon farms in recent months.

On 1 March, an unconfirmed number of fish escaped from marine Harvest’s Hellisay site in the Western Isles. The primary cause of the incident was a whole in the net, which was caused possibly by snagging/a predator. The size of the fish that may have escaped was 3kg.

Then, on the 1 May, an unconfirmed number of fish escaped from Gripfisk owned by Migdale transport in the Highlands. The sited cause of the incident was equipment failure due to a human error.