9 minute read
Shellfi sh
SHELLFISH
From Brexit headaches to restoration milestones, it’s been an eventful year
IN January, UK shellfi sh
producers were reeling following reports that EU rules restricting the import of live mussels, oysters and other shellfi sh were set to continue indefi nitely.
European regulations forbid the import of live bivalve molluscs “not fi t for consumption” from “third countries” – that is, countries outside the EU single market – unless they are either harvested from the cleanest “Class A” waters or have already been “depurated” – that is, cleaned by being left to stand in saltwater tanks prior to entering the EU.
UK producers previously sent their shellfi sh for depuration at large processing plants on the Continent, so facilities for depuration in the UK are extremely limited. The rules eff ectively ban many UK producers from exporting their product to their traditional markets in Europe.
UK producers said they had been given assurances by the UK government that the situation was being addressed and that the regulations would be lifted on 21 April. As it transpired, that was not the European Commission’s view.
Much of Scotland’s shellfi sh pro-
Above: David Jarrad Opposite from top: The Orkney Shellfish Hatchery; Shrimp; Cumbrae Oysters
duction comes from waters that meet the criteria for Class
A – defi ned as 80% of sampled shellfi sh having less than 230 E. coli bacteria per 100g of fl esh and the remaining 20% recording less than 700 E. coli per 100g – but almost all of the waters around England and Wales are Class B at best, although this does vary by the seasons. Live exports of bivalves from traditional areas such as Devon and Morecambe Bay were therefore barred from the EU, placing many producers in serious jeopardy.
David Jarrad, Chief Executive of the Shellfi sh Association of Great Britain, told Fish Farmer: “It’s a big problem! There is not the scale of depuration facilities in the UK. If we invested now it would take many months and serious money to construct such tanks, but that wouldn’t solve the issue alone and the product would then have to be promoted to a diff erent market: retail rather than bulk.” The ban aff ects a range of mollusc species including mussels, oysters, clams, razor clams, cockles and scallops.
In March, Orkney Shellfi sh Hatchery (OSH) announced the successful
hatching of its fi rst run of European clawed lobsters for 2021, almost three months earlier than initially expected. The land-based hatchery is raising lobsters to help replenish wild stocks. The hatchery, part of the Cadman Capital Group’s Aquaculture portfolio, announced its plans to trial on-land production for lobsters in September 2020 and said at the time that it expected the pilot run would complete around May 2021. The trial has made use of products from OSH’s sister company, Ocean On Land Technology, including the “Hatchery-in-a-Box” concept. This is a containerised lobster hatchery system that can house and culture lobster from broodstock through to the post-larvae stage. Also in March, multinational feed group Skretting announced plans to invest $6.1m (£4.3m) in a new shrimp research facility in Ecuador to complement the Skretting Aquaculture Research Centre (ARC) network. The Skretting ARC Guayas Research Station will be located next to the
group’s recently completed feed manufacturing plant in Ecuador. The new R&D facility, centrally co-ordinated by Skretting ARC in Norway, will comprise fully equipped laboratories and state-of-the art experimental units to carry out trials under controlled conditions. Fish Farmer also reported on a joint venture between Benchmark Genetics and the Happy Prawn Company to raise warmwater prawns in Norway. The project involved 200,000 Litopenaeus vannamei (Pacifi c whiteleg shrimp) larvae being shipped from Florida to the Happy Prawns RAS facility in Norway. Founder Magnar Hansen said: “Our goal is to produce a tasty product based on environmentally safe solutions.”
In May, shellfi sh farmer Cumbrae Oysters signed a new lease with the owners of Hunterston Port and Resource Centre, doubling the size of the shellfi sh producer’s site at the port. Cumbrae Oysters director and owner Alan Forbes said: “I am very pleased to have this deal in place. Our oysters are in great demand in places like China, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau, as well as here in the UK and in Europe, and the South Annan Sands at Hunterston have all the conditions to produce the kind of seafood most wanted in the Far East especially… with this expansion, we will be able to double production and we will be looking to create a further two jobs on site, with additional seasonal opportunities.”
In June, we reported that Great British Prawns, the UK’s fi rst producer of sustainable land-based and clean water prawns, had gone into administration.
The pioneering company blamed a fall in demand caused by the closure of restaurants during the long coronavirus lockdowns. Around 18 jobs at the company were lost.
It opened two years ago in the Scottish village of Balfron in Stirlingshire with a plan to harvest up to a million L. vannamei shrimp in the fi rst few months of operation.
The business suff ered an initial setback in 2019 when many of its fi rst batch of imported juveniles turned out to be infected with IHHNV (infections hypodermal and hematopoietic necrosis virus) and had to be destroyed. Then, within a year of starting up, its main markets, in hospitality, were closed down by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Scottish Shellfi sh Farm Production Survey 2020 from Marine Scotland Science showed that shellfi sh farming in Scotland was badly hit by the Covid-19 pandemic during 2020. Table production tonnage of mussels decreased by 15% from 6,699 tonnes in 2019 to 5,661 tonnes in 2020. Table production of Pacifi c oyster shells decreased by 33% from the 2019 total. Additionally, over 1.6 million shells were produced for ongrowing in other waters. There was also a decrease in the production of native oyster from 103,000 to 75,000 shells in 2020. The report, based on information supplied by producers, said the decline was largely due to impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic, with many businesses reporting no table trade while the hospitality sector was in lockdown during much of 2020. For further details, see page 68. Meanwhile, Seafarms, the Australian shrimp farming group, announced plans to raise AUS $90m (£49m) to fund its Project Sea Dragon project in the north of the country. Project Sea Dragon is a large-scale, integrated land-based prawn aquaculture development designed to produce year-round high-qual-
ity prawn volumes for the export market.
The group said funds were being sought immediately to start construction on the project with the aim of achieving the fi rst prawn harvest by the third quarter of 2023. As it turned out, Seafarms was able to raise AUS $92.5m, underpinning its position as one of Australia’s biggest aquaculture producers.
In August, we reported that Norwegian Lobster Farm, the world’s fi rst business to produce land-based farmed lobsters, and Norwegian data specialists Green Mountain had
teamed up in a ground-breaking energy project. Norwegian Lobster Farm had agreed a deal with Green Mountain on the reuse of waste heat from the IT business. The project represents an innovative example of the “circular economy” concept, with waste heat from the data centre reused for the lobster farm’s recirculating aquaculture system.
The announcement followed the unveiling of a similar partnership earlier in November between Green Mountain and land-based trout farmer Hima Seafood.
Also in August, many of New Zealand’s mussel farms were cleaning up after huge storms wreaked havoc across South Island.
The cost of the damage was reported to run to millions of dollars.
The storms, which brought 25-foothigh waves and were the worst in over 15 years, hit the Tasman Bay area at the top end of South Island, leaving a trail of tangled mussel lines and building damage.
One Tasman Bay company, MacLab which is located near the port of Nelson, said more than half of a 670-acre farm was torn out of the seabed.
In October, we reported that aquaculture researchers in Scotland were developing a PCR method that will help detect the presence
Opposite from top: Pacific oysters; Shrimp; Seafarms, Project Sea Dragon This page from top: New Zealand mussel farm; (L-R) Green Mountains Tor Kristian Gyland, Alf Reime and Asbjorn Drengstig from Norwegian Lobster Farm; Oysters
of a range of diseases and biofouling species aff ecting oysters and mussels. With nearly £200,000 of funding from the Seafood Innovation Fund and the Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre, the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute is building a validated testing system that allows oyster growers to proactively test for Bonamia ostreae, a common and potentially fatal disease that is otherwise diffi cult to detect. The 15-month project is also supported by companies and organisations across the oyster farming and research sectors, as well as practitioners looking to restore the shellfi sh to their native habitats. Designed to be aff ordable and easy to use for growers, the testing system will also detect the presence of oyster herpes virus and vibrio bacteria, along with biofouling species such as tube worms. In November, the fi rst stock of native fl at oysters from Orkney Shellfi sh Hatchery (OSH) were released into the ocean as part of a local restoration project. The latest release, which saw more than 11,000 of Orkney Shellfi sh Hatchery’s land-grown, premium native oyster spat planted into the ocean on the west coast of Scotland, was orchestrated by a Scottish restoration project dedicated to replenishing depleting shellfi sh stocks in Scotland’s seas. OSH said the project aligned with the hatchery’s mission “to become the market-leading producer of the highest-quality native oyster spat” and supported its continued focus on aiding the restoration of Europe’s shellfi sh stocks, which have fallen dramatically.
Below: Orkney Shellfish Hatchery’s first stock of native flat oyster spat released into Scottish seas
