Fish Farmer Magazine November 2017

Fish Farmer VOLUME 40

Serving worldwide aquaculture since 1977

NUMBER 11

NOVEMBER 2017

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EUROPEAN FOCUS

SELF CONTAINED

INNOVATION SITES

SHELLFISH SPOTLIGHT

Reports from the EAS conference in Dubrovnik

Meeting technical standards - in Scotland and Norway

Helping Scottish salmon farmers reach growth targets

Janet Brown finds the mood upbeat at Oban gathering

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06/11/2017 16:30:28

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Contents 4-15 News

What’s happening in aquaculture in the UK and around the world JENNY HJUL – EDITOR

Changing perceptions

T

his has been a busy time for the aquaculture industry, in Scotland and in Europe, which recently saw another successful European Aquaculture Society conference, this year held in the beautiful Croatian city of Dubrovnik. We bring you reports from there - on oysters, bluefin tuna, and how fish farming can help save the human race, no less.

Closer to home, we have updates on containment challenges, from the suppliers’ and the producers’ perspective. But the big issue once again is health on salmon farms. Farmers continue to invest heavily in sea lice and disease mitigation, and the sector appears to be in good shape, certainly in business terms, as Scott Landsburgh from the SSPO reports on page 19.

But changing perceptions is proving to be a tougher battle, and it has now become a priority of the Aquaculture Industry Leadership Group, set up a year ago to drive growth, to address this (see page 16).

We welcome comment from across the industry and this month we launch a platform for you to have your say. Nikos Steiropoulos of Europharma writes about meeting production targets, and we hope to publish regular opinions from the front line of farming, academia and even government in the future.

Finally, we’re delighted to announce that Fish Farmer has been shortlisted in the Scottish PPA magazine awards, taking place later this month. Wish us luck!

Fish Farmer is now on Facebook and Twitter

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Meet the team

Contact us

Editorial Advisory Board: Steve Bracken, Scott Landsburgh, Hervé Migaud, Patrick Smith and Jim Treasurer Editor: Jenny Hjul Designer: Andrew Balahura Advertising Manager: William Dowds wdowds@fishupdate.com Advertising Executives: Dave Edler dedler@fishupdate.com Scott Binnie sbinnie@fishupdate.com Publisher: Alister Bennett

Tel: +44(0) 131 551 1000 Fax: +44(0) 131 551 7901 email: jhjul@fishupdate.com

Cover: The wellboat Gerda Saele at one of Grieg Seafood’s sites in the Shetlands

Head Office: Special Publications, Fettes Park, 496 Ferry Road, Edinburgh, EH5 2DL

Welcome - Nov.indd 3

Ace Aquatec

38 Containment Fusion Marine

18 Comment Phil Thomas

40-42 Containment Aqua Knowledge

19 SSPO

46-47 Aquaculture Europe

20-21 Comment

48-49 Aquaculture Europe

Scott Landsburgh

Martin Jaffa

Introduction

Tuna

22-23 Shellfish

Janet Brown

24 BTA

Doug McLeod

26-27 Industry platform Meeting targets

28-31 Containment Grieg Seafood

50-53 Aquaculture Europe Oysters

54-55 Aquaculture Europe EAS Reports

61-63 Processing/Retail News Seachill sale

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36 Containment

Aquaculture Innovation Sites

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16-17 ILG

Contents – Editor’s Welcome

64-65 Aqua Source Directory

Find all you need for the industry

32-35 Containment AquaMoor

66 Opinion

By Nick Joy

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06/11/2017 16:38:59

United Kingdom News

NEWS...

Work starts at ‘world’s largest’ onshore farm

Above: Work underway on the site earlier this month

WORK has begun on a closed containment salmon farm in Tayinloan on the Kintyre peninsula which, when completed, may bring 20 new jobs to the area.

Demolition workers were pictured earlier this month at the site, which is being developed

by Perthshire based FishFrom, reported Hannah O’Hanlon

of the Campbeltown Courier.

FishFrom, which claims the site will house ‘the world’s largest onshore recirculation salmon facility’, received

planning permission in December 2013 to build a £20 million closed containment aquaculture production facility at Rhunahaorine.

The site previously hosted a salmon farm which operated for around 15 years but was left in a state of disrepair following its closure in 2003.

Little has been done in the years following the planning permission approval, but in February this year an application to renew planning permission was granted and, with a building standards warrant in place, work began to demolish the existing structures on the site.

Two JCB opera-

tors using machinery from Ruttle Plant Hire, whose managing director Harry Ruttle owns the site, have begun, to level the previous buildings.

FishFrom’s Brian Floyd told Fish Farmer that they are on schedule and construction work is due to start early next year.

And FishFrom’s director Andrew Robertson recently met Fergus Ewing, minister for the Rural Economy and Connectivity, to discuss the plans.

When it first went to planning, the concept was largely supported by the local community, as well as then Highlands

and Islands MSP Jamie McGrigor, Kintyre and the Isles councillor Anne Horn, and West Kintyre Community Council.

Supporters argued that the development would bring much needed jobs to Kintyre, while restoring the derelict site.

The closed containment, recirculation system should reduce pollution, as there should be no waste streams or effluent.

And being on land means there is no risk of sea lice, predators such as seals, or escapes.

Kintyre councillor Rory Colville said: ‘It is exciting, it will make a dynamic change to the economic future of the Tayinloan area.’

First spat from mussel hatchery goes to sea THE first mussel spat reared at the Scottish Shellfish Hatchery Stepping Stone project in Shetland was transferred to on-growing sites at sea in October.

The milestone was announced

by Daniel Cowing, aquaculture scientist and technician at the NAFC Marine Centre, and Michael Tait, chairman of the Scottish Shellfish Marketing Group, at the Association of Scottish Shellfish Growers’ annual conference in Oban.

There, industry members were given an update on the £1.7 million, 30-month collaboration which also involves Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre and the European Maritime and

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Fisheries Fund.

‘We’re not yet achieving the quantities we would like but we are now seeing larvae develop through to spat stage and settle on to ropes, which is a major advance in itself,’ said Cowing.

‘The next step will be taking the ropes offshore, where the spat will be closely monitored over a growing period of two years.’

Tait said: ‘It’s a positive position in which to end what has been a challenging but ultimately insightful first year. We’ve learned lots about feed requirements and spawning. Now the key focus is on survivability and bacteriology. Get that right and the implications for the industry are very exciting.’

The mussel industry is now estimated to be worth more than £10 million a year in Scotland. A commercial scale hatchery would

see this value increase further, resulting in higher and more reliable yields, new jobs and greater export potential.

Above: Hatchery reared mussel spat taken off a settlement rope and placed under a microscope slide

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06/11/2017 16:12:54

All the latest industry news from the UK

Prize hat-trick for SSC

Tuna fished out of salmon pen A 300kg Pacific bluefin tuna was hauled out of a salmon pen off Colonsay at the end of October after ‘torpedoing’ through the net.

Atlantic bluefin tuna are common in Scottish waters, but Pacific bluefin tuna are rare as they prefer the warmer waters of the north and south Pacific oceans.

The Marine Harvest team at Colonsay used a panel net - normally deployed during harvesting - to capture the 3m long tuna, valued at well over £100,000. A 221kg fish fetched £517,000 at Tsukiji market in Tokyo in January, according to the Fish Site.

The landing craft crane was then used to lift the tuna into a large basket for transfer to the open sea where it happily swam away.

Farm manager Ali Geddes said: ‘We’d noticed a lot of activity around the southern part of the farm – there seemed to be a real feeding frenzy going on with the dolphins and porpoises.

‘It’s now clear they were chasing a tuna.

These things can move at real speed – up to 50 mph – and it seems to have burst through the foot of the pen like a torpedo.

‘Thankfully, the tuna seems to be unhurt and none of our own fish have escaped. They are very small at this stage – the site has only recently been stocked with smolts which tend

Above: Valuable bluefin tuna was released

to swim towards the top of the pens away from the base.

‘The hole the tuna made was more like a slash than a round hole and we called in divers who repaired it within a few hours.’

Ben Hadfield, managing director of Marine Harvest Scotland, was delighted the Colonsay staff managed to release the tuna unscathed.

‘Congratulations to the team for sorting this.

It could have been a very different story and it’s testament to their skills that this beautiful fish is still alive and well.

‘They’re skilled in handling fish but our salmon grow to about 5kg in size, so this was well beyond the norm. We believe it was a whacking 300kg, which is more than 47 stone.’

Marine Harvest’s farm at Colonsay has 12 pens, each 120m in diameter. Ten people are employed at the farm, including the manager.

THE Scottish Salmon Company (SSC) won three awards at the Highlands & Islands Food and Drink Awards, recognising its achievements in exporting, innovation and new product development.

SSC was named winner of the Export Award and in the Innovation and New Product Award category for its Native Hebridean Salmon, at a ceremony in Inverness last month.

The world moves forward

Craig Anderson, chief executive, said: ‘To win three awards is a fantastic achievement. We are very proud to have been recognised for our commitment not just to provenance and innovation, but in helping to grow the impact of Scotland’s food and drink industry around the world.

‘To win in the New Product category for our Native Hebridean Salmon is particularly special for us.’

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06/11/2017 16:13:12

United Kingdom News

Study to identify skill needs on farms

A STUDY to identify the skills needed to help the Scottish aquaculture sector meet is growth targets has been launched by Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

Companies in aquaculture and related services are being invited to take part in the project, which emerged from the industry’s Vision 2030 report, setting out plans to double output.

The study will involve consultation and survey work to explore the scale and composition of the aquaculture workforce, the current and future skills requirements of the sector and the skills pipeline that feeds it.

Findings will inform the development of an Industry Workforce Planning Strategy and Action Plan.

Stewart Graham, managing director of Gael Force and cochair of the Aquaculture Industry Leadership Group which is overseeing the strategy for growth, said: ‘Feedback from the finfish producers has consistently been that people and their skills are a

Above: Fergus Ewing

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significant potential constraint to our sector’s growth plans.

‘This of course is closely tied to the availability and affordability of rural housing, which is a high level challenge for the government and private sector supply.

‘Skills mapping, however, is something the industry can and must take a lead on now to plan for the future, and I would plead with all producers and the wider supply chain to fully engage with this mapping exercise so that we can get ahead of the curve on our future skills needs.’

Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing said: ‘This government is committed to supporting Scotland’s aquaculture sector to continue to grow in a sustainable way. This mapping work will help to ensure that we have the right skills in the right places in the sector and have a plan in place to address any gaps, and I would encourage all with an interest to participate.

‘Being the workplace of choice and attracting a diverse and multi skilled workforce will be essential to maintaining the momentum and ambition within the sector.’

Highlands and Islands Enterprise has commissioned Ekosgen and Imani Development to undertake the study, and they will be contacting businesses in the aquaculture sector and its supply chain over the next few weeks to invite them to take part in a consultation or online survey.

Sites set on growth: Page 16.

Infection wipes out 500 tonnes of fish MARINE Harvest has confirmed that the outbreak of a bacterial infection at one of its Lewis farms has resulted in the loss of 500 tonnes of fish.

Some 125,000 salmon of around 4kg each have died so far, with lorries carrying the carcasses from the island.

Steve Bracken, the company’s business support manager, said: ‘The health issues we have had at Loch Erisort since the end of August are the result of a bacterial infection called Pasteurella skyensis which only affects fish and is completely harmless to humans.

‘Strains of the Pasteurella bacteria are present in many species of fish and outbreaks of infection occur from time to time.

‘In the salmon farming industry we are experiencing

ongoing changes in the sea conditions, due to factors such as climate change and global warming, which mean we have to monitor our fish even more carefully and be ready to respond accordingly.

‘The salmon are responding well to treatment from our team of vets and we hope that we are close to resolving the problem. So far, 500 tonnes or approximately 125,000 fish have died.’ He said the fish are being treated with antibiotics, which now seem to be working, and the farm is ‘through the worst of it’.

‘Cut red tape or miss growth target’ THE Scottish aquaculture industry’s target to double production by 2030 cannot be met because of government red tape, said Craig Anderson, boss of the Scottish Salmon Company.

Scotland produced 162,817 tonnes of salmon in 2016 and set out plans last year to more than double this total to 350,000 tonnes.

But Anderson, whose company is Scotland’s third biggest producer, told the Herald that the system for applying for Controlled Activities Regulations (CAR) licences to farm fish had to ‘radically’ change, along with the bodies governing the industry.

‘Under the current regime of licence applications that [target] is not going to be hit,’ said Anderson. ‘We as a salmon producing nation will miss that target by far, that’s just a fact. Currently it takes three years from Sepa (Scottish Environment Protection Agency) and once you get your CAR licence you then have to go to the local authority to get planning [permission] to anchor your previously approved farm site to the seabed and if they refuse, that’s three years wasted.’

He acknowledged that the Scottish government had been ‘very supportive’ of the salmon farming industry, but he called on the four bodies who regulate the industry to look at how they could work together to make the industry ‘fundamentally better’.

Scott Landsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation, said he fully understood Anderson’s frustrations, but added that ‘a lot of work had been going on over the years to de-clutter the red tape’. ‘The Vision 2030 group put forward an ambitious target but nevertheless it was based on sound reasoning, and particularly on the fact that our competitor countries had grown exponentially while Scotland had flat-lined for 10 to 15 years.’

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 16:13:53

All the latest industry news from the UK

SSPO puts hope in post-Brexit report THE Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation (SSPO) has published a working paper aimed at securing the best possible outcome for the Scottish salmon industry post- Brexit.

As talks take place between the UK and EU negotiating parties, the SSPO says its report will act as a starting point for discussions.

The organisation has identified four key themes underpinning the industry’s aims and hopes: customs arrangements; legal and regulatory certainty; workforce and communities; and international trade policies.

The European market was worth £149 million to Scottish companies in the first six months of 2017, representing approximately 47 per cent by volume and over 43 per cent by value of total salmon exports from Scotland.

Scott Landsburgh, SSPO chief executive, said: ‘While the report itself is reasonably ‘high level’ and broad rather than deep in content, much detailed work has gone on behind the scenes in preparing a Brexit strategy.

‘We have consulted far and wide, and held

constructive talks at senior political levels. We are, in the main, encouraged by the willingness of politicians and civil servants to listen to our concerns, give feedback and updates and push our agenda forward.

‘But there is nothing concrete that we can rely on as things stand. We have a number of aspirations for our industry on what the talks will bring for us but, ultimately, we have to assume a ‘worst case scenario’.

‘We need to be able to work without a free trade deal if it comes to that and we have spent a good deal of time establishing what would be needed to make this scenario work sufficiently for our industry.’

He said the biggest concern is what might happen at the port of entry. ‘The EU are legally compelled to accept our goods but they can put all sorts of strictures in the way to make it difficult and if you’ve got perishable product…there could be a real problem.

‘In our ideal scenario, the UK and EU would agree a tariff-free comprehensive free trade deal

Kintyre fish farmer lands three book deal A FISH farm manager turned writer hopes to hook young readers with alien tales, reports Mark Davey of the Campbeltown Courier.

Andrew Robertson, 52, published his first book, The Dijimflippers, part of a planned series, at the end of September in America, with the UK version appearing on the shelves in October.

The title is based on a work colleague’s saying.

‘Whenever he was looking for a spanner,

bored. His wife was working away in Inverness and his son had grown up.

‘I wrote two books at first but kept quiet about them for at least a year until I was encouraged to try to find a publisher,’ said Robertson.

‘I write what I think I would have like to read as a child.

‘I get up at about at the freshwater site 4am to write, the laptop has made it so at Loch Garasdale (operated by Cooke easy, I get lost in the story and suddenAquaculture), near Clachan, for 11 years. ly three hours has passed and I have to At first he wrote go to my work.’ because he was

nut or bolt he would say: ‘Where’s my Dijimflipper?’ said the Tayinloan based selftaught author.

Robertson’s father owned a 40ft prawn boat, and for about 20 years, until he was Above: Andrew Robertson struck down by fibromyalgia aged 37, he worked at sea. He then moved to fish farming, working with salmon smolts, and he has been the manager

that allows our produce to enter EU markets in much the same way and at the same cost and within the same timeframes as now.

‘Then we could move on to taking the potential opportunities that the situation gives us- new free trade deals with other world markets and, ideally, a more efficient customs and exporting process.

But we are still some way off achieving this.’

He said other markets, outside Europe, could be expanded: ‘I think that could be achieved quite quickly, particularly in the US. I don’t think there is any trade impediment to that.’

New seabed monitoring may unlock growth A COLLABORATIVE project to improve understanding of the effects of salmon farming on the seabed in high energy waters is underway in Orkney, with co-funding from the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC).

The three-year project, which sees Cooke Aquaculture Scotland partner with researchers from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, will inform the environmental monitoring and management of more exposed sites and, potentially, unlock additional capacity.

Currently, the benthic impacts of salmon farming – the impact of fish waste or uneaten feed on the seabed – are monitored by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa), using the DEPOMOD model, which is based largely on data gathered from sheltered, inshore sea lochs.

However, at more exposed sites, where this same waste matter is dispersed more widely by strong tides, the benthic impacts can differ significantly.

Judges named for aquaculture awards THE judges have been announced for the re-launched Scottish Marine Aquaculture Awards, to be held on May 23 next year during the Aquaculture UK exhibition in Aviemore.

The eight-strong panel has been chosen for its breadth of knowledge of the varied aspects of the UK aquaculture industry, said awards organiser 5m Publishing.

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They include Alex Adrian, aquaculture operations manager of Crown Estate Scotland; Jim Treasurer, research director at FAI Ardtoe; Martin Gill, managing director of Acoura; Rob Fletcher, senior editor of the Fish Site and Sustainable Aquaculture Magazine; Professor Neil Hazon, director of the Sustainable Aquaculture Course at the University of St Andrews; Nicki Holmyard, head

of Corporate Communications for Offshore Shellfish; Sunil Kadri of Hatch Blue; and event organiser Susan Tinch.

Adrian, who was on the judging panel when the awards were run by the Crown Estate, said: ‘I’m keen that the awards are being continued because they are an important showcase for the continuous innovation shown by aquaculture businesses.’

Above: Alex Adrian

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06/11/2017 16:14:43

European News

NEWS...

Marine Harvest delivers record Q3 earnings MARINE Harvest announced record earnings of €194 million for the third quarter of this year, driven, it says, by high prices and a strong market outlook.

The figure compares with an EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) of €180 million for the same period in 2016.

CEO Alf-Helge Aarskog said the good results were also supported by strong demand for salmon and improved results from

its sales contracts.

‘It is encouraging to see that costs decreased for our

farming operations in Norway, Chile and Canada in the quarter.

‘Marine Harvest

continues to have the utmost focus on cost reduction throughout the organisation. I am

also pleased to see that our value added production continues its improvement in a challenging quarter.’

Marine Harvest Group reported operational revenues of €868 million (€850 million last year) in the third quarter.

Total harvest volume was 95,338 tonnes in the quarter (97,215 last year). Harvest guidance for all of 2017 has been reduced to 369,000 tonnes from 377,000 tonnes because of biological

issues in Norway.

Salmon of Norwegian origin achieved an operational EBIT per kilo of €2.24 (€1.98) , while salmon of Scottish and Canadian origin reported operational EBIT per kilo € of €2.33 and €1.73 respectively (€0.60 and €2.63). The good results in Scotland, supported by higher contract prices, came against a background of improved costs. But these were expected to increase in the fourth quarter of 2017.

Iceland firm seeks land based licence to farm salmon AN Icelandic aquaculture company has applied to build a land based salmon farm in a small community in the north east of the country.

Iceland is looking to grow its fish farming industry over the next decade and during the summer it commissioned a study into the environmental impact of any expansion, which is now being hotly debated.

The report ruled out fish farming in the Isafjordur region, for example, but this has drawn criticism from some of its more isolated communities, who have lost traditional fish processing jobs and now want to be considered for any future fish farming developments.

But this application, by the company Fiskeldi Austfjarðar – or Ice Fish Farm, is unusual in that it is on land. Most Icelandic farms are offshore.

However, the national broadcaster ruv.is reports that the proposed site at Kópasker is in an important nature conservation area dating from the end of the Ice Age, which means that an environmental assessment will have to be carried out before any planning approval is granted.

It would also have to be redesignated as an industrial area. The farm would cover around 5,000 square metres and produce 2,000 tonnes of salmon a year.

Ice Fish Farm is a relatively young farming company. It was established in the summer of 2012 and now produces sea reared trout and

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salmon in Iceland’s eastern fjords.

It says it operates an eco-friendly fish farming business and has received Aqua Gap verification on its production and harvesting. Currently, it holds an 11,000 tonnes licence but has applied for additional capacity for 43,000 tonnes.

The company produces its own smolt and has a well equipped harvesting station at Djupivogur, which it describes as a logistically excellent location, with easy air freight access from Keflavik, along with good shipping arrangements.

Ice Fish Farm believes that its plan will help stimulate the local economy and it seems to have the support of the community, which says it remains optimistic that approval will be granted.

The company has also applied to significantly expand production of salmon and trout at its existing sites in the east fjords region, which may

mean increasing the size of some farms.

Meanwhile, Rögnvaldur Guðmundsson, CEO of AkvaFuture, told a conference on the environment and nature conservation that Iceland could become a pioneer in aquaculture technology.

He referred to the aquaculture industry in Norway, where the Oslo government has embarked on an ambitious plan to massively boost its aquaculture sector over the next 30 years despite battling against a number of environment problems.

Guðmundsson revealed that his company was developing closed cages to minimise infection.

The company harvested 200 tonnes of salmon last year and plans to reach 5,500 tonnes by 2019. While it was not possible to totally prevent fish from escaping, he said his company had not lost a single fish for the past six years.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 16:10:11

All the latest industry news from Europe

Technology ‘must drive salmon farming logical development and biological research as examples of where state investment could help.

If used in the right way, technology could double value creation in the industry.

But production costs also needed to be reduced otherwise salmon could not compete on price with meat products, she argued.

Above: Salmon farming can be expanded ‘While one goal is to increase production, another should be to export Norwegian aquaTECHNOLOGY should be at the forefront of any culture technology to other countries, so that future development of Norway’s aquaculture inthey can also increase their food production,’ dustry, a leading research figure has suggested. she said.

Aina Valland, director of business development Valland also pointed out that the environmenand social contacts at the Norwegian Seafood tal footprint of aquaculture is considerably less Federation, said there was no reason why salmon than for the production of lamb, chicken, cattle farming should not be expanded, provided it was and pigs. It was also area-efficient, with any done in the right way. impact on natural areas reversible.

Valland, who is a civil engineer, said in a report In an earlier report, two Norwegian research to the federation she was pleased that engineers groups, Sintef and the Norwegian University of were showing an increased interest in the sector, Science and Technology, disclosed they were but if the industry was to grow properly it also working on robotic projects to transport fish needed investment from the government. from farms and to inspect the underwater parts She cited the Ocean Space Centre for technoof sea farms.

BioMar boosts production by 70% at Norway plant BIOMAR has increased the capacity at its plant in Karmøy, Norway, by 70 per cent, following the opening of a third line.

Line 3, with an annual capacity of 140,000 tonnes, will have one of the highest hourly outputs of any single production line of fish feed anywhere in the world.

BioMar CEO Carlos Diaz, who was present at the official opening, said: ‘We wish to

continue providing the salmon industry with the very best, high performance fish feed and to do that we need to invest in the latest and best technologies.’

BioMar has invested NOK 436 million (£41 million) in the Karmøy production line.

Among the advanced technologies is an air processing system and scrubbing towers that use cold seawater to scrub emissions.

Above: BioMar CEO Carlos Diaz

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www.faivre.fr 6/11/13 14:15:00

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06/11/2017 16:10:30

European News

A SENIOR Norwegian delegation flew to China last month in an attempt to unlock the impasse over salmon exports to the country.

Despite a highly publicised trade mission led by Prime Minister Erna Solberg back in the spring, salmon exports have yet to take off.

This was followed up a month later when the fisheries minister, Per Sandberg, signed a salmon protocol in the hope of opening up the world’s largest market to Norwegian seafood.

The Chinese Food Safety Authority is demanding stringent health and hygiene checks, especially in regard to preventing sea lice, before they open the door.

They are worried that their own farms could eventually become infected by lice or disease if they relax the rules.

Senior consultant Harald Martin Misje told the broadcaster NRK said that despite complying with the food safety bodies in China, salmon was still not coming into China in the volume Norwegian fish farmers had hoped.

‘I believe we (Norway) have done everything we can to ensure our seafood is exported into China smoothly,’ he said.

‘As well as negotiating an agreement we have answered the many questionnaires they have sent us and we have given them all the assurances we can.’

The latest mission was led by Astrid Holtan, deputy director of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, who said the purpose was to review the situation and answer any questions the Chinese authorities may put. There may also be a need to go over some of the health related issues again.

She said: ‘Exports of salmon have not increased since 2016, although there has been a considerable rise in sales of white fish and mackerel to China.’

She stressed that relations between the two countries had warmed significantly following differences over the treatment of the late Chinese dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo in 2010.

Above: Erna Solberg

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EU court upholds €20m Marine Harvest fine A €20 million fine against Marine Harvest has been upheld by the European General Court. The fine was imposed by the European Commission over three years ago in relation to the company’s takeover of the Polish salmon firm Morpol in December 2012.

The Commission claimed that the acquisition – which saw Marine Harvest acquire a 48.5 per cent stake in Morpol – went ahead without having received prior

authorisation under EU merger regulations.

It also concluded that Marine Harvest should have been aware of its obligations to notify and await clearance from the Commission before proceeding with the deal.

Marine Harvest said it was disappointed by both the outcome and the fact that its arguments presented to the General Court (EU) had not been accepted.

The company was

informed by the General Court (EU) that the European Commission’s initial decision to fine Marine Harvest €20 million stands.

The company said it will now embark on a judicial review of the judgment and decide whether to go ahead with an appeal to the EU Court of Justice.

If an appeal is

lodged, a final non-appeal judgment is expected to be made by the end of 2018. However, Marine Harvest has made provision for a sum of €20 million in its accounts.

New feed guidance for salmon THE Norwegian Institute of Fisheries and Seafood Research (NIFES) has produced new recommendations for the vitamin and mineral supplements in the feed for Atlantic salmon.

It says this is necessary because of a shift from mainly marine ingredients to feeds where more than 70 per cent comes from plants.

For the past six years NIFES has been taking part in an EU project called Arraina, the goal of which is to find out how much micronutrients different species of fish need now that the composition of the feed has changed.

Norway and Scotland have collaborated on the part of the project that concerns salmon. It turns out that, for some of the vitamins and minerals studied so far, the old recommendations are far from what the fish actually need.

‘When we first saw the results, we could hardly believe our

Photo: Kristin Hamre, senior scientist at NIFES

Oslo bid to break Chinese salmon deadlock

Above: Kristin Hamre

eyes,’ said Kristin Hamre, senior scientist at NIFES. ‘For example, when the results for the B vitamin niacin came in, it turned out that salmon needs four times as much niacin as previously recommended, and twice as much vitamin B6.’

The old recommendations for micronutrients in feed were the result of trials conducted in the 1980s. The trials were largely performed on rainbow trout juveniles, and very few studies looked at salmon and adult fish.

‘Implementation of

this new knowledge is important for the growth and welfare of the salmon,’ said Hamre.

‘Lack of micronutrients can be fatal for the fish. Too little of just one nutrient is enough to cause problems.’

She explained that farmed salmon feed has changed dramatically in the last 10 to 15 years. Plants contain anti-nutrients that can cause the fish to absorb less of the nutrients in the feed, and in some cases the salmon therefore need different quantities of vitamins and minerals.

Hamre added: ‘Even if the plants contain these nutrients, the fish are unable to absorb them to the same extent as they would from marine feeds.

‘Plant ingredients also contain lower levels of some nutrients than fishmeal and fish oil do. That is why we need to adjust the amount of micronutrients.’

Through the Arraina project, NIFES scientists have now created nutrient packages of all the micronutrients, which they have added in graded levels to the feed.

In a separate study, the Norwegian Food Inspectorate has submitted samples of Norwegian produced salmon for laboratory analysis and the results show that the omega-3 level in farmed salmon has decreased over the past 10 years, because large parts of today’s salmon feed are plant and not fish based.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 16:10:51

All the latest industry news from Europe

RAS experts build feed research centre MALTESE company AquaBioTech Group has completed a research facility in the Netherlands for the feed company Alltech Coppens.

The Alltech Coppens Aqua Centre, sited in Valkenswaard, comprises a number of state of the art recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) designed to run simultaneous nutrition trials for a variety of species.

Each RAS unit has been custom designed so feed trials can be carried out in both saltwater and freshwater conditions for species such as salmon, trout and catfish, with temperatures ranging from six to 28 deg C. The facility consists of 60 tanks in four separate systems, with the option to pair these,

Above: Opening ceremony at the research site

making two larger systems for increased replication purposes.

The systems are designed to operate at commercial level stocking densities and include several additional features for ease of husbandry practices.

For example, a partial tank drainage system is incorporated into the small systems to allow for some tanks

to drain and run at 50 per cent capacity, while retaining the water in the systems to increase water utilisation and energy consumption efficiencies.

The AquaBioTech Group, which has designed and built RAS systems for customers across the world, will provide remote technical support for the centre.

Lower prices help drive up Norwegian salmon exports LOWER prices are thought to have helped drive a substantial increase in Norwegian salmon exports during October.

Figures from the Norwegian Seafood Council show that the volume was up by 10 per cent or 8,500 tonnes - on October last year to a total of 98,500 tonnes.

But the value of these shipments rose by just two per cent or NOK 123 million to a total of NOK 5.7 billion in a period when prices continued to fall back.

The average price for whole fresh salmon in October was NOK 54.65 per kilo against NOK 60.12 last year.

So far this year, the country has exported 807,000 tonnes of salmon worth NOK 53.4 billion. This is a volume increase of one per cent, while the value increased by nine per cent or NOK 4.3 billion. Once again Poland and France were the largest markets.

Exports of farmed trout are continuing to decline. Exports last month totalled 4,000 tonnes

worth NOK 253 million. The figure is down by 18 per cent or 866 tonnes and also down by 18 per cent or NOK 54 million. The main buyers of Norwegian trout are China and Belarus.

Norwegian seafood exports of all types last month came out at 275,000 tonnes worth NOK 9.1 billion, with volumes down by five per cent and the value three per cent - or NOK 281 million - lower.

However, there was better news on fresh cod with volumes up by 23 per cent to NOK 91 million in October.

Breakthrough in breeding ‘happy’ sterile salmon THE Norwegian food research organisation Nofima has cracked the code which will allow salmon farmers to produce sterile fish.

The breakthrough, which has taken more than 10 years to achieve, is not only expected to bring environmental and welfare benefits, but should also help allay contamination fears on wild fish when farmed salmon escape, which has long been the subject of protests by angling and environmental lobbies.

Nofima (the Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research) says it has developed salmon that cannot produce reproductive cells. The work was carried out at Nofima’s production plant in Kårvika, in the Troms region, where more than 2,000 sterile salmon are currently floating in tanks.

Senior scientist Helge Tveiten said he was delighted with the results, adding that all the signs showed sterile salmon ‘were as happy’ as any other salmon.

The researchers have found a method that not only curbs the fish’s ability to reproduce, and nothing else, but the salmon in the experiment have managed to reach one year of age, with each weighing around 300g.

‘The salmon we have bred do not develop sex cells,’ said Tveiten.

‘There is a very small root bag in the female fish, but no eggs are formed.

‘Based on the studies done so far, the sterile fish have the same appearance and characteristics as fertile salmon.’

Tveiten and his team’s work led to the creation of a project titled SalmoSterile, which is part of the BIOTEK 2021 programme funded by the Research Council of Norway.

The project is a collaboration with Norway’s Institute of Marine Research and several key industrial players, including AquaGen, the largest supplier of eggs to the salmon industry.

Tveiten said the goal of SalmoSterile has always been to find a

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European News.indd 11

Right: AqXxx

harmless and unproblematic method of sterilisation of farmed fish.

Salmon farmers and egg suppliers now believe this sterilisation method should help to solve many of the current challenges facing the aquaculture industry.

Tveiten believed there may also be commercial benefits as the meat quality of sexually mature salmon deteriorates faster.

Above: Helge Tveiten delighted with the results

11

06/11/2017 16:11:12

World News

NEWS...

Fish-free feed contest ‘demonises’ marine ingredients IFFO director general Andrew Mallison accused those involved in a fish-free feed competition of ‘demonising’ the fishmeal and fish oil sector.

During the GOAL conference in Dublin last month, he said the charge by the F3 Fish-Free Feed Challenge that the marine ingredients industry was unsustainable was ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’.

And the allegation

by Kevin Fitzsimmons, an F3 judge, that the fishmeal sector is responsible for slavery in Asia was ‘outrageous’.

By actively seeking to damage IFFO, the F3 Fish-Free Feed Challenge ‘damaged its credibility’.

Mallison said 45 per

Above: Aquaculture needs all the materials

cent of the world’s fishmeal and oil production is certified under IFFO’s RS (responsible supply) scheme.

And costs are going down while availability is increasing.

‘But given the growth of aquaculture, we recognise the need for alternatives and

we welcome them, we want to see the aquaculture industry go forward,’ he said.

‘There is no point demonising responsibly sourced fishmeal and fish oil, we need all the materials.’

The winner of the F3 competition was China’s Guangdong

Evergreen Feed Industry Co, which secured the $200,000 prize for selling the most fishfree feed to aquaculture over a 16-month period.

The marine ingredients organisation criticised the competition organisers’ ‘use of negative messaging,

exaggeration and misinformation in relation to marine ingredients’.

‘The reduction in inclusion rates has allowed feed production volumes to continue to increase unhindered, also resulting in only 0.22kg of ingoing fish being needed to grow 1kg of farmed fish, for the most recent calculation based on 2015 data,’ said IFFO. ‘The organisers claim many of the world’s wild fish stocks are in rapid decline – a claim not borne out by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation reports that show, since 1986, that global wild capture fisheries have been steady and are not declining.’

Most farmed fish species are evolved

to digest fish protein, said IFFO, and replacement of this with terrestrial or other sources of protein can lead to fish gut inflammation and a risk of disease or mortality.

Guangdong Evergreen sold 84,691 tonnes of its feed during the contest, to tilapia and carp farmers in China, Vietnam, Iran and Indonesia.

IFFO said fish-free feeds have been available for many years for mainly vegetarian species such as tilapia and carp.

‘It is also well known that piscivorous species like salmon and trout can be raised on vegetable based diets, although their growth and health may be compromised.’

New feed mill for Nigerian farmers NIGERIAN fish farmers will have better access to formulated feeds with a new feed plant, built by Singapore based Olam International and opened in September.

Olam said it is supplying a wide range of competitively priced and specially formulated, fully floating freshwater fish feeds for more than 15,000 local farmers in Nigeria.

Located in Kwara State, the new fish feed facility will boost feed supply to help meet rising demand in Nigeria for fish, which is currently around two million tonnes per year.

Olam’s two fish feed brands - Blue Crown (standard range) and Aqualis (premium range) - are tailored to the needs of the African catfish sector, but the company is encouraging the diversification of Nigeria’s aquaculture industry beyond catfish.

This includes supporting small to medium and large scale farms in breeding and farming other tropical fishes and marine varieties.

To drive improvements in fingerling quality through better broodstock management, prevention of in-breeding and improving growth potential, Olam’s R&D facility is being set up in partnership with Nanyang Technological University of Singapore.

Future fish consumption in Nigeria faces supply challenges from overfishing, water pollution and global warming. Production from natural

12

World news.indd 12

habitats is expected to stagnate or even decrease.

Fish farming is therefore essential to meet the gap and reduce the need for imports, now between 700,000 to 800,000 tonnes annually, resulting in a foreign exchange outflow in excess of US$1.0 billion.

One of the barriers to increasing aquaculture production is readily available, affordable and good quality floating fish feed, which accounts for more than 70 per cent of the local farmers’ production costs.

The Kwara mill has an initial capacity of 75,000 tonnes of fish feed per annum that can be scaled up.

Furthermore, Olam’s qualified aqua technicians will train farmers on best practices in fish farming, and it has created internships for around 100 veterinary, aquaculture and agronomy graduates who will receive hands-on learning opportunities at the company’s state-of-the-art facilities over a two-year period.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 16:05:50

World News

Aller Aqua opens China plant DANISH feed group Aller Aqua has opened a new feed plant in China, just months after its Zambian factory became operational.

Aller Aqua Qingdao, the company’s sixth factory, will be headed by Anders C Bylling, the son of Hans Erik Bylling, who is Aller Aqua’s group president.

The latter said: ‘Inaugurating two factories in two months is exceptional.

We have had a few busy years leading up to the inaugurations and now we are finally ready. I am proud of what we have achieved.’

Anders Bylling said at the official opening in Qingdao that the process of building a factory in China had been long.

‘We have had some delays along the way, but we reached our goal. Our Chinese team has worked exceptionally hard to have everything ready for the inauguration.

‘It has been a very good day with almost 200 participants for the opening itself, and almost 300 participants in the International Cold Fish Aquaculture Technology Seminar we organised the day before.’

Aller Aqua chose to establish itself in China without a Chinese partner, like other feed companies have done.

Hans Erik Bylling said: ‘We chose to establish the factory without a local partner to ensure that we can continue to deliver the products that the customers are familiar with.

‘We have delivered high quality aquafeed to China for the last 20 years, produced under European standards, and we will continue to run the factory like we would in Denmark.

‘We will do this by sourcing the raw materials in Europe, and ensure a highly trained local team which knows how to comply with the European standards.’

The factory in China will focus on growing cold water species in the aquaculture industry in China, and the seminar was hosted by the Heilongijang River Fisheries Research Institute (HRFRI) of the Chinese Academy of Fishery Science.

Aqua-Spark backs new technology AQUACULTURE investor Aqua-Spark announced backing for two cutting edge technology companies that aim to make fish farming healthier and more efficient by eliminating antibiotics, reducing feed, and enabling farms to safeguard their broodstock.

Proteon is transforming bacteriophages, or ‘phages’, found in nature into commercial grade products that target bacterial infections in a way that doesn’t create resistance.

The company has two main products on the market: a solution against pseudomonas and aeromonas infections in fish and a solution against salmonella infections in poultry.

Meanwhile, another company, Cryoocyte, has developed high-precision fish farming technology to bring greater control and accuracy to fish breeding.

Through technology for low temperature preservation of unfertilised eggs, Cryoocyte allows more time to assess genetic material before mating decisions must be made.

New data on egg quality, presence of disease, and parental DNA helps Cryoocyte’s customers make more precise male-female mating decisions and produce naturally healthier offspring.

With these investments, Aqua-Spark said it has entered new areas of the value chain where there is potential to dramatically improve the industry overall.

The programme included speakers from China and Europe, a visit to Aller Aqua Qingdao and concluded with a shuttle bus to China Fishery Expo.

Aller Aqua Qingdao will have a production capacity of 45,000 tonnes annually. The factory is Aller Aqua’s first in Asia and Hans Erik Bylling considers it essential.

‘The factory will increase our competitiveness in China, with shorter delivery times to key markets.’

The factory will export to both Korea and Vietnam.

The company was recognised at the recent IFFO annual conference in Washington DC, when it won a Leadership and Innovation Award for its expansion work in Africa.

Below: Hans Erik Bylling and his son Anders C Bylling at the opening

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06/11/2017 16:06:09

World News

Vietnam threat to sue America in export restrictions row

VIETNAM has warned it may sue the United States at the World Trade Organisation if the stringent new US Farm Bill unfairly discriminates against exports of its catfish,

said to be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Vietnamese exporters say they will intensify lobbying of US officials and partners to show that the catfish monitoring

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programme is expensive, unnecessary and should be abolished.

US catfish breeders have repeatedly called for action to be taken against fish from Vietnam.

Hendrix moves into shrimp breeding DUTCH based breeding company Hendrix Genetics has completed a deal with Integrated Aquaculture International (IAI) to participate in the breeding and production of shrimp for the global industry.

IAI is an aquaculture technology company on the Above: (Back row from left) Neil Manchester, Hawaiian island of Kauai. Its Chris Howell, Antoine Driessen, and (front row) Thijs Hendrix, George Chamberlain and breeding centre produces genetically improved Pacific Anton van den Berg the development of state-of-thewhite shrimp (Litopenaeus art breeding facilities for both vannamei) broodstock under the brand name Kona Bay and will soon shrimp species in Kauai, as well as the development of model launch its line of SPF black tiger hatcheries for the production of shrimp (Penaeus monodon). post-larvae in key market regions The participation by Hendrix around the world. In addition, a Genetics will accelerate the shrimp comprehensive programme for breeding programme by introducspecific disease resistance will be ing advanced genetic and genomic implemented to further enhance technologies. The deal will also the quality of Kona Bay broodstock. provide the capital necessary for

Australia sells ‘unique’ system to US shellfish farmers

A MARYLAND company has agreed a deal to sell an Australian made longline system to US shellfish farmers.

Hoopers Island Oyster Co will distribute the Hexcyl system, recognised for its production efficiency and shellfish quality.

Its unique hexagonal, cylinder shaped basket is suitable for growing oysters, scallops, clams, mussels and other shellfish and is offered in a wide range of mesh sizes.

Originally designed to farm Pacific oysters in South Australia’s high energy, inter-tidal zones, the adjustable longline system allows farmers in similar North American envi-

ronments to raise and lower the growing height of stock to better manage shell growth, hygiene and meat condition.

‘For our own oyster farming operation at Hoopers Island on Maryland’s eastern shore, we wanted to add an adjustable, longline system that would hold up to the variable weather conditions, winds and changing tides of the Chesapeake Bay,’ said Ricky Fitzhugh, Hoopers Island managing partner.

Hexcyl oyster baskets and products are made for a wide range of grow-out options.

Each basket handles up to 22 pounds of stock and is available in five mesh sizes.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 16:06:36

All the latest industry news from around the world

Cooke seals $500m fishmeal purchase POMS may cause Antipodean oyster THE Canadian fish farming and seafood company Cooke Aquaculture has acquired Texas based fish oil and fishmeal producer Omega Protein in a deal worth around US $500 million.

A statement said the purchase was negotiated through its parent company, Cooke Inc, and has been unanimously approved by the boards of both companies, although it may not be completed until the end of the year or even early 2018.

Glenn Cooke, CEO of Cooke, said: ‘We are very pleased to sign this agreement with Omega Protein, which will provide us with another platform in Cooke’s growth strategy through further diversification in the supply side of the business.

‘We believe this will be a very good fit between our two cultures. Omega Protein has a 100-year history with an experienced and dedicated workforce, which we value, and a tradition of operating in small, coastal towns and communities that we share.

‘Their focus on sustainable

aquaculture and agriculture and the production of healthy food is also a great fit with our experience and culture.’

Bret Scholtes, president and CEO of Omega Protein, said: ‘We are excited about the agreement, which we believe recognises the value of Omega Protein’s successful, 100-year-old fishing business and also provides stockholders with an immediate premium.

‘Cooke is a family owned company and, in many ways, reminds us a lot of ourselves and this agreement is the perfect fit for the two companies. Cooke is a highly regarded and responsible leader in the global fishing and seafood industry.’

Omega Protein is mainly engaged in harvesting menhaden fish, and has seven manufacturing facilities in the US, Canada, and Europe, and owns more than 30 fishing vessels.

The New Brunswick, Canada, based Cooke family has salmon farming operations in Atlantic Canada, the US (in Maine and Washington), Chile and Scotland.

shortage

Above: Australian oysters

AUSTRALIAN oyster farmers are braced for a production shortage in the run-up to Christmas, with demand already far outstripping supply in restaurants and retail outlets, ABC news reported.

Wholesalers say that prices have jumped 30 to 40 per cent since the start of the year and could continue to rise into the festive season.

WESTERN consumers could be buying seafood processed and prepared by The outbreak of PaNorth Korean workers, an investigation by Associated Press has established. Thousands of people have been sent overseas to earn money for the cific Oyster Mortality Syndrome (POMS) in rogue state, funds which are then used to finance its missile and nuclear Tasmania in 2016 has weapons programme.

AP says many are working in China, where they are strictly controlled and meant that production of baby Pacific oysters are paid just a tiny proportion of their wages, with the rest being sent to could not be sent to the North Korean government.

China is a major exporter of seafood products to the US, Canada and Eu- key growing areas of rope, including the UK. Now US politicians are demanding that China turns South Australia and parts of New South away North Korean workers.

Wales.

POMS is not dangerous to humans but it has devastated Tasmanian oyster farmers who specialise in producing oyster spat.

Oysters Australia

North Koreans ‘preparing US seafood’

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World news.indd 15

president and Smoky Bay oyster farmer Bruce Zippel said he expected it to be a difficult period for farmers.

‘We are expecting an oyster shortage, particularly through the rest of this year, which is already starting to hit and also through next year,’ Zippel said.

‘I’d really like to stress that we ask the public for patience because the industry will be back with a vengeance.

‘During 2019, probably during the winter, there will be a lot of oysters around at that point so please bear with us during this period of storage.’

Mark Allsop, chief executive of Australia’s Oyster Coast, represents 45 New South Wales farmers and markets and distributes their product.

He said the supply of oysters has dropped by about 30 per cent

since the beginning of the year, while prices had started to rise by about the same.

‘Demand started to outstrip supply about six weeks ago. We have seen increased demand for rock oysters based on the reduction of supply out of Tasmania and South Australia.’

Oysters are selling for about $22 (£13) per dozen for smaller grades of Pacific and Sydney Rock oysters at the Sydney Fish Market.

‘Consumers in restaurants would have been paying $3-4, but they’re now paying over $5 each.’

He thinks distributors will keep prices where they are now but oysters may disappear from some parts of the market.

‘Buying oysters in supermarkets and all you can eat buffets will be a thing of the past.’

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06/11/2017 16:08:43

Vision 2030

Sites set on

growth

Industry to use innovation licences to trial new technology and disease control

T

HE landscape of Scotland’s aquaculture industry could start to look very different from as early as next year under a new system to establish innovation sites.

A key recommendation in the Vision 2030 report, published a year ago by the industry, Aquaculture Innovation Sites will promote growth by conferring special status on both new and existing locations that meet specific criteria.

Vision 2030 recommended that innovation sites would be for ‘controlled trials and development of equipment, technologies or disease control measures and regulation’, and the Aquaculture Industry Leadership Group (AILG), set up to implement the vision, has now taken that idea forward.

A sub-group of the AILG, led by the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre and involving all Scotland’s finfish producers, as well as representatives from academia and the supply chain, has drafted proposals that it will bring to a meeting with Marine Scotland on November 13.

The plan has already been discussed with Rural Economy Minister Fergus Ewing at the last meeting of the AILG in October and he is said to be driving the initiative.

If approved, Aquaculture Innovation Sites will see changes in licensing arrangements to facilitate green development licences, new high energy and exposed sites, higher biomass sites, and a more innovative regulatory framework.

Although the AILG looked at Norway’s development licences during its discussions, this is ‘going to be very much a Scottish system’, said Stewart Graham, who is co-chair (along with Jim Gallagher of Scottish Sea Farms) of the AILG. ‘We expect there might be a class of innovation site which is large and new, but we’d also expect that small sites could be innovation sites, and also that we might have existing sites moving into innovation site status.

‘We’ve had two initial industry meetings to start to formulate the ideas as to what an innovation site might consist of. It might be trialling new equipment, or it might have a partnership with academia, or be trialling new medicines, biological innovation, or regulatory trialling.’

For sites to qualify for innovation status, several criteria have been identified, including environmental performance, economic and community benefit, technical innovation, regulatory innovation, and support for supply chains.

The AILG has proposed that there should be a simple application process to set up the sites, along with local community engagement.

‘It’s moving really quickly and the minister has been very supportive of this particular recommendation and suggested that this must happen in a matter of weeks and months not months and years.

‘We may well see a defined scheme for the innovation sites in Q1 next year.

That’s potentially doable.

‘Those industry participants who have been present at the two innovation meetings have reached a consensus and when the further meeting is held we expect to go in with a clear view from the whole industry.’

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ILG.indd 16

Above: Stewart Graham Opposite page: Aquaculture Innovation Sites may soon get approval in Scotland

The October meeting of the AILG saw progress on several other fronts, said Graham, who is also managing director of Gael Force Group.

Among these is the recommendation to spell out clearly and consistently the social and economic benefits of any development in a planning application.

‘Some operators already do this quite well and some don’t do it at all,’ said Graham, adding that a template is being prepared by Imani, the first draft of which should be completed by the end of the year.

‘We have to put huge and great amounts of effort into doing EIAs (environmental impact assessments) and things have gravitated almost wholly to the environmental aspect of sustainability.

‘However, what we haven’t spelt out very clearly in planning applications is what the social and economic benefit of a particular development is – which, by statute, the planning officials are obliged to consider.

‘This [recommendation] gives a mechanism and a template to give that balanced view that hasn’t consistently been there to date’ – something he said all the producers could then use in their planning applications.

On the wider issue of speeding up the planning process, Graham said there had been work going on for years to develop a consenting review.

‘There have been eight quick wins identified within that – and ‘quick’ is very much in inverted commas here! We’ve delivered five out of the eight and Marine Scotland is now reporting at each AILG meeting on the progress on that.

‘I believe we can expect in the very near future that all of the ‘quick’ wins will be delivered.’

The longer term goal of creating a completely new planning regime will take more time.

‘We have fitted planning for aquaculture developments into terrestrial planning frameworks and it has led to a system which is very clunky,’ said Graham.

‘That’s a big piece of work and will need a lot of careful consideration from the industry. I guess to some extent we have become used to the devil we know rather than taking a leap of faith into some-

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06/11/2017 16:03:15

Sites set on growth

The “ minister

suggested that this must happen in a matter of weeks and months not months and years

”

thing completely new. But there is clearly a case to consider whether we should have a single planning process which is very different to the terrestrial process – some sort of marine licensing arrangement. There are pros and cons and we’ve not really got into that yet.’

He said he understood the frustrations expressed recently by Craig Anderson, managing director of the Scottish Salmon Company, over the current regulatory apparatus.

‘We can make progress at the Industry Leadership Group but that doesn’t necessarily change behaviour on the ground, from officials and regulators.

‘No matter what we say in terms of policy change you always have local democracy with local authorities and if you’re not able to sway local members on any particular issue then that’s just the way it is.

‘Any application must engage with local members and ensure they’re as on side as they can be. Craig is right to be frustrated because we have senior people, the heads of Sepa, ministerial heads, we’ve got Vision 2030, all of this, and it is simply frustrating that we don’t see employees on the ground changing behaviour.

‘If you’ve got a clear policy and a clear steer from the senior team and from government then, eventually, if behaviours on the ground don’t change, people need to change.’

Changing mindsets, Graham acknowledges, is outside the AILG’s control but while there wasn’t a recommendation in Vision 2030 relating to image and presentation, this is something the industry has decided to address with some urgency.

Bad press continues to plague the salmon sector, despite its contribution to the Scottish economy and its role in bringing employment to rural areas.

‘I’m hugely frustrated, and I know the Cabinet

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ILG.indd 17

Secretary is too, that we appear in many ways to have been sitting back and being reactionary and taking things on the chin when we have a wonderful positive story to tell and we don’t tell it. It isn’t a recommendation but I think it’s absolutely critical to do something.’

To launch a long term, positive promotional campaign, Graham will sit down with the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation to agree ‘exactly what that message is that we want to put across, and how we fund it’.

He admitted it had taken ‘quite some considerable time to get to a place where the whole producer industry and producer organisation’ reached a consensus on this, but now ‘there’s a recognised need across the producers that we must tell the positive story that we have to tell’.

To help promote the industry, the AILG is setting up a communications group, which will disseminate information more widely. It will publish minutes from AILG meetings on a new website, due to be up and running early in the New Year, and this will also chart the progress being made on each of the Vision 2030 recommendations.

‘We don’t have a perfect way of communicating with our stakeholders and recognise that something needs to be done there,’ said Graham.

Also ‘ticked off the list’ of Vision 2030 recommendations is digital connectivity – ‘we’ve just about got a commitment that we’ll have high speed broadband in place on every location, albeit by 2021’, said Graham.

And transport improvements are underway too, with the industry’s infrastructure constraints being fed into the next strategic review of transport in Scotland.

He pointed out that there are no full-time staff on the AILG and no budget.

The group includes public sector organisations and all the key private sector producers, as well as Fergus Ewing, who Graham said is ‘a tremendous asset to Scottish aquaculture’s ambitions’.

‘We’ve been delighted by the work rate and the huge support from the minister and it would be an absolute blow for our growth plans and that of the rural economy were he not in this position.’

The Vision 2030 report articulated the industry’s intention to double aquaculture’s value from £1.8 billion to £3.6 billion, with finfish production growing to 300,000 to 400,000 tonnes by 2030 and mussel output to 21,000 tonnes.

The number of jobs across the sector could increase to 18,000 if the ambition is realised.

The next full meeting of the AILG will be in Inverness on December 8. FF

17

06/11/2017 16:03:37

Comment

Underpinning United BY

BY PROFESSOR PROFESSOR PHIL PHIL THOMAS THOMAS

provenance we stand

Politicking lacks purpose – butwhat working Do we think enough about givesfolktherise to challenges several other farming locations.

ACK in theits daysedge when I was a researcher, international meetings in industry in key markets?

However, alongside this, October has also providEurope would often witness different UK research groups intellectually

B I

knocking six bells out of each other, with no quarter asked for or given. t may notfacet be politi correct to say so at Every of thecally research reports would be ferociously challenged, present but farmed Atlantitoc the salmon would from the experimental designs, quality of the data, to the statistical not have become Scotland’s of leading food analysis, to the final interpretation the findings. export Estate’s positi vebemusement of our contiThat was without the Britishthe wayCrown of doing science, to the engagement withwho aquaculture development nental colleagues, would always establish their agreed national scientific back in well the 1980s. position before coming to the meeting.

The British ding-dongs almost legendary.

Now, aquaculture is became a significant part of the But there were times when they were marine quickly curtailed.

All it needed for one of our continental counagency’s leasing portf olio andwas is reguterparts to feel they engageEstate’s in the process.

The Brits would then become larly celebrated bycould the Crown Scottish tribal, close ranks and display a remarkable Marine Aquaculture Awards event. Thismutual year’ssolidarity.

I haveinreflected on this over thewas pastthe month, as Brexit discussions event Edinburgh on often the 11 June and disagreements have dominated usual highly successful showcasethe fornews Scottiday sh after day. I voted ‘remain’ because I thought be easier to achieve major EU reforms from within aquaculture anditawould rare opportunity for indusrather from outside. try to than join together to mark its success.

However, when the Brexit vote was – and more so as Brussels negoThe Crown Estate is presently at‘leave’ the centre tiations havedevoluti ‘progressed’ - I have come to the view of further on discussions between thethat the UK will have to be outside the EU to find ownsh salvation.

UK government andits Scotti government. The Central in this is a of desperate need re-establish long-term future key Scotti sh to functi ons re- some grown up politics in Westminster and in the regional seats of government mains unclear and professional expertise could in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in and to process restore public confidence in our political parties and be squandered the of organisati onal political change.institutions.

This not aCrown time for party orcore regional politicking.

Bothisthe Estate’s experti se and The future prosperity of communities throughout the UK demands politicians align forces, close ranks the Marine Aquaculture Awards are imporand get behind the position that UK democracy has determined. tant in maintaining the distinctive coherence are currently many examples wherebe that ofThere Scotland’s aquaculture and it would a is not happening, from the wholly irresponsible demands that es theof UKpoliti government publishes its impact tragedy if they became casualti cal analysis papers prior to the Brussels negotiations, to the attempts of remain change. supporters, from all parties and governments, to undermine the UK’s position This year’s Awards event was hosted by by undertaking their own lobbying in Brussels. actress, writer and comedian Jo Caulfield, an This maychoice appearby likewhoever business made as usualthe to the politicians, but it feeds into inspired booking. the volatile and fractious politics of the UK, and erodes any sense of national She was very funny and entertaining and kept purpose. the proceedings going with a swing. Only once Politicians should have doubt thatwhat the voting public will have long memdid she stray, when shenowondered ‘proveories and will notmeant’. forgive those who they believe are currently letting them nance actually down.

In a room full of folk whose livelihoods Meanwhile, in the day to day world, where working people are getting on with their lives, salmon farming in Scotland is going through a year when sea 12 water temperatures have been exceptionally high.

There has been a very unusual, local incidence of Pasteurella skyensis in Loch Erisort, and gill and parasite challenges have been encountered in

“

We should be organising our training and education provisions much better

”

SSPO.indd 12

18

Phil Thomas.indd 18

ed significant new developments and quite a lot of depend on the provenance of their products she quickly sensed an augood news. dience response and moved toHarvest safer comedic At the start of the month, Marine began material: there are some things you don’t joke about! recruiting for just the former sea bass and sea bream However, her remark left me asking whether we think enough hatchery at Penmon in Anglesey that it has myself acaboutfor the underpinning thewill provenance of Scottish farmed fish – and quired wrasse production.ofThis substantially for me the that’s farmedcleaner salmon. increase industry’s fish capabilities- and There is no doubtdevelopment. that Scottish provenance is important to our industhat is a very positive Additionally, wide innovation and markets. try – it givesindustry us the edge in all our key on-farm testing of new in but most people will agree Provenance can beengineering defined in solutions various ways sea liceitmanagement now making significant that goes beyondare the appearance and sensory qualities of the final progress, knowledge andvisual experience is beingon and product consistency product:and flavour, texture, presentati shared between help deal appeal with thebut provenance is about are always keycompanies factors in to consumer problems arising from climate change. much more.

Linked on October 30,ofatconsumer the ConvenIt reflwith ects this, a wider concept quality assurance, including: tion the Highlands andfish Islands, Ruraland Economy theofplace where the is grown processed; the professional Secretary gaveon theand green light to themethods; and the quality, integrityFergus of theEwing producti processing development ofand Scotland’s first aquaculture innova- – the professional skills, commitment care of the people involved tion sites,se, which will be a very welcome and signifiexperti passion and dedicati on of the producers themselves. cant addition to the industry’s R&D capabilities.

In Scotland our ‘place of production’ gives us a huge natural advanAnd, because in mid-October, Nofima tage we grow fish announced in the pristiane coastal waters of some of breakthrough in thefulbreeding of scenic sterile salmon.

This the most beauti and wild areas of the world, and our brand is will remove the possibility of escaped fish breeding protected by its PGI status. with the wild adopti population and make NASCO’s Likewise, on of the Scotti sh Finfi(the sh Code of Good Practice North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation) allied with the industry’s deep commitment to a range of independent preoccupations with genetic introgression including a thing the RSPCA fish welfare farm quality assurance programmes, ofscheme, the past.builds on the underlying strength of our statutory regulatory Finally, this am making anon inaugural ‘Fake systems to month assureI our producti systems.

News of the Month’ award.

This goes to Julia Horan Finally, the skills, expertise, passion and dedication of our farmers ofcan thebe Sunday Times (October 22) for her day story,in and day out – and they were demonstrated in abundance headlined ‘Fishbyfarms under fire for seal death toll’, showcased the recent awards event. saying that seal shootings by objecti Scottishve ‘fisheries and looking, it is this third However, being wholly and forward fish farms’ in the first half of 2017 were almost 50 area of provenance where the Scottish industry has greatest scope for per cent higher than in 2016, and ‘most systemati c development.

Thatthat is not to seals say that our industry’s skills were by fish farms’. and shot professional expertise are not of the highest calibre, but it is to However, what point out was thatand training structures, and recognise that Julia our failed vocatito onal educati onal fish farm shootings had increased by less than nine Above: Wrasse per cent, while fisheries shootings had increased www.fishfarmer-magazine.com by 200 per cent, revealing a rather different story.

Congratulations to Julia and well done to the Sunday Times! FF

I am “ making an

inaugural ‘Fake News of the Month’ award and this goes to the Sunday Times

”

03/07/2015 14:31:33

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 16:02:17

Trade associations – Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation

BY SCOTT LANDSBURGH

Fact versus

fiction

Industry working hard to overcome environmental challenges

S

ALMON farming’s recent record of commercial success, culminating in its position as Scotland’s and the UK’s number one food export, is something to be proud of as an industry. UK exports of whole, fresh salmon rose 17 per cent in value in 2016 from the previous year. Significant increases were seen in Far Eastern and EU markets, and the Middle East also recorded a significant increase, growing by nearly 32 per cent.

We are acutely aware, however, that we still have detractors and continue to come in for strong criticism, particularly from a minority in the wild salmon sector.

On some of the criticism we need to set the record straight as the factual detail can get lost in the ‘noise’ of media hysteria. Most notably, there has been seemingly limited effort in obtaining the full facts on the problem of sea lice.

First of all, sea lice occur naturally in marine waters and are found on both wild and farmed salmon. Over the last year, the numbers of sea lice were, in some locations, higher than we would have wished to see.

In some cases, it was a challenge to reduce the levels, but Scottish salmon farmers invested heavily in cleaner fish and physical equipment that can remove them, as well as using a range of veterinary medicines to address the issue. The situation is now improving.

The dramatic media reports we have seen fail to mention that on every salmon farm there is an action plan to monitor and manage sea lice levels continually throughout the production cycle.

If, as has happened on a number of farms, the level goes above three adult female lice, the farm notifies Marine Scotland Science and explains their action plan to reduce the numbers. The farm remains in contact with the government agency until the issue is resolved.

In that way, the farm and the regulator monitor progress closely and fish health and welfare are always looked after. This is part of a long-standing, transparent and extensive exchange of information with the regulators about our fish health standards.

As any farmer knows, looking after health and welfare requires dedicated husbandry, and nowadays the techniques involved have to adapt to rapidly changing environmental conditions, such as warmer water temperatures and exotic algal blooms.

In addition, we are in the process of establishing a 10-year fish health strategy in collaboration with Marine Scotland Science to develop new farming methods to future proof this important sector from any biological or environmental challenges which come its way.

With the level of investment, the scientific research and dedication of hard working farmers, sea lice may remain a challenge, but one we can overcome.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

SSPO.indd 19

Business confidence in the industry remained high last year, as a new SSPO new report, published on November 6, showed. For the second year, capital investment is sitting at £63 million and nearly 3,500 Scottish companies are benefiting from doing business with salmon farmers.

Some 2,400 of these companies are in the Highlands and islands.

Expenditure on suppliers and services to maintain production was more than £595 million, with just over £390 million of that spent in Scotland, and the salmon farming sector increased employment by 13 per cent last year.

The economic impact is particularly evident in the Highlands and islands, where £164 million was spent directly with local businesses. In total, wages increased by five per cent to almost £75 million.

I’m especially pleased to see more recruitment and that 91 per cent of jobs are full-time. This is a major boost for the Scottish economy, but for the Highlands and islands it is a vital economic and social support.

In addition to the business of salmon farming and the demonstrable benefits that brings, the industry is committed to supporting local communities where staff and their families live and work.

Salmon farming companies allow staff time off to volunteer for vital local services such as mountain rescue and the fire service. By sharing facilities, time, expertise and providing financial assistance, salmon farming supported communities to the value of £735,000.

The industry’s long-term commitment to the Highlands and islands and its workforce is also seen in the continued skills and training programmes, with 111 young people on Modern Apprenticeships or National Progression Awards schemes.

Scott Landsburgh is chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation. FF

Media “ reports fail

to mention that on every farm there is an action plan to monitor and manage sea lice levels

”

Above: Pest management is a feature of every Scottish fish farm

19

06/11/2017 15:58:00

Comment

BY DR MARTIN JAFFA

Save the

salmon

Nature out of balance when seals are protected

I

ONCE heard a story that, back in the day, gamekeepers taking new clients out deer stalking used to check on their ability to shoot straight by leading them down to the river estuary and getting them to shoot a couple of seals.

As well as seeing how well they could shoot, it helped keep local seal numbers under control and hence protect wild salmon stocks. Seals are now protected and such practices, if true, are history.

Seals are in the news with two stories that highlight the difficulties of protection and conservation.

The Irish newspaper the Kerryman (Independent.ie) reports that Laune Salmon and Trout Anglers’ Association has outlined the stark reality that salmon stocks have plummeted as a result of increasing seal numbers.

The association is hoping to secure the support of the county council for a cull in what they see as a last-ditch effort to save local salmon stocks, which they say are in terminal decline.

The association is not looking for a general cull but the control of ‘specialised seals’ that have learned to push up the river in the hunt for food.

The association had previously blamed local drift net fisheries for the decrease in salmon stocks, but despite buying out the nets some years ago the decline has continued.

Now the anglers are calling for the same measure that the netters once demanded – a cull of seals.

In Scotland, the Times newspaper reported that licensed shooting of seals has increased by 50 per cent in the first half of this year compared to 2016.

Last year, 41 seals were shot in Scotland whereas this year, the number has increased to 61. The paper says that ‘most were shot by fish farms’.

Interestingly, the two critics of shooting seals quoted in the report prefer to lay the blame with salmon farmers while choosing not to criticise others who are responsible for seal deaths.

Although there has been a slight increase in the number of seals shot, the general trend is downwards and the number killed much lower than the 450 killed in 2011.

Salmon farmers would rather not shoot any seals but, just as the anglers in the River Laune have discovered, some individuals try to push the boundaries in their hunt for food. It is these few seals that run the risk of being shot.

Inevitably, the few odd seals that step up their hunt for food will eventually become many. This is part of the natural predator-prey life cycle that governs many animal relationships.

20

Martin Jaffa.indd 20

Simply, a bounty of local food will provide the nutrients for population growth of a predator population. In the case of seals, healthy fish stocks will ensure seal populations can continue to reproduce and grow.

However, a growing seal population will eventually devour the local food reserves, leading to starvation and premature death, and the population will collapse. The reduced feeding pressure will help local food recover and so the cycle will continue.

The presence of humans has meant that populations became regulated. Seals were killed to maintain a balance but, with increased conservation measures and protection, seal populations have been able to grow, especially on the west coast.

Food is not as abundant as it used to be and a few seals are tempted by the rich resources found in farms.

Critics say that farms should put more robust defences in place to keep these few seals away, but this is not a solution. The growing and protected seal population will deplete the local food sources and either become a much wider problem for farms, even with the most robust defences, or the seals will starve.

The question is then, what will the seal charities do to help these seals? Will they come with food or remove weak seals to their sanctuaries?

Without effective management, protected populations will be increasingly out of balance with nature. What will happen then?

In Ireland, local salmon stocks are not just under threat from seals. The numbers of returning salmon have fallen significantly over the last 30 years.

Seals may be the final nail in the coffin as they wipe out the fish that do manage to survive and return. Are wild salmon as worthy of protection

Opposite: Common seals

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:56:53

Save the salmon

increased “With conservation

measures, populations have been able to grow, especially on the west coast

”

as seals or is the decision about what should be protected and saved to be left to whether it has the ‘ah’ factor?

Anti-salmon farm campaigners are highlighting that Scotland might lose access to the lucrative US market if the shooting of seals continues, due to new restrictions on imports of fish and seafood that have been harvested in such a way that harms marine mammals.

It seems that the US is more concerned about the protection of a few seals in Scotland than it is about the harm done to its own citizens.

Scottish salmon farmers (and fishermen) may have shot 61 seals in the first six months of this year but on an average day in the US, 93 human beings are fatally shot. FF

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Martin Jaffa.indd 21

21

06/11/2017 15:57:14

– ASSG SG and SSPOTrade – to Associations into oyster growing around the globe and also an t topics of the day overview of the Hungarian aquaculture industry, which is ors respectively. beginning to evolve from production of carps to higher d we hope you’ll value predatory fish. We hope you enjoy all the changes. FF

Rob Fletcher News Editor

Shellfish – ASSG conference 2017

has 0 years of the stry. Now ournalist, er afood magazine.

ry Board

ws

ons aculture

BY JANET H BROWN

Paul Wheelhouse is Scotland’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change and is an MSP for the South of Scotland.

Janet Brown works to support and promote all aspects of sustainable shellfish culture and restoration via The Shellfish Team and edits The Grower.

Cultivating confi dence The other side of the pond

Minister as heoffocuses sector’s Growers new horizons Can the upbeat Association ScottishonShellfish learn anything from 8 the (PDR), which will be of particular benefit to the ASSG conference takesCoast place each year but there are criteriaAssociation to wayHEAmerica’s East Shellfish Growers is organised?

Below: Fergus Ewing

T D

determine precisely the dates: first of these is that it has to be at neap tides else the oyster growers won’t come.

Secondly, it has to avoid school holidays for all the different areas Robert B Rheault more commonly of the rUK but this year we–unfortunately couldn’t avoid the English holknown as ‘Skid’ Rheault (Rheault beingand with the meeting still idays. Despite that, attendance was excellent or Bob – set up the holdingpronounced on to its inti‘row’) mate feel.

Shellfish Growers It is aEast realCoast conference, with the attAssociation endees so keen to confer with one ols (ECSGA)that in 2004 and has diffi been its executive another the greatest culty for the organisers lies in getting them director sixeeyears. back afterfor coff and meal breaks to start the next session. d became in the idea ofwhen, an as-after a welcome from Nick ItSkid certainly gotinvolved off to a cracking start sociation been working as an by Fergus Ewing, Cabinet Lake, CEO because of ASSG, he thehad conference was opened oyster farmer in Rural a state withoutand an aquaculSecretary for the Economy Connectivity. ture theantime – Rhode Island.

The industry minister at gave entertaining speech which set us up for a very rectory positi ‘I had to be very active on the state level to ve conference. get he said.

‘I established a sh state Thethings themegoing,’ was ‘Scotti sh culti vated shellfi – new horizons’ and Ewing growers’Herve association a few allies, started welcomed this asMiguad, partiwith cularly apt, refland ecti ng theHughes aspirations and growing asurer, Steve Bracken, Sunil Kadri Ken writing an industry newsletter andonsent it towith all its highest ever mussel confi dence of the shellfi sh cultivati sector, n: Andrew Balahura the stateonlegislators, brought guest speakers producti this last year and aninincrease in first sales value of shellfish by wds wdowds@fishupdate.com Publisher: Alister Bennett from£1.6million other states things were going over in where one year.

0 Fax: +44 (0)well 131and 551 7901 e-mail: editor@fi shfarmer-magazine.com a negative word washad played in this growth and He spokewhere of thenary importance investment e.com www.fithe shupdate.com heard. weprovide. got some and those who had applied helpEventually EMFF could Hetraction congratulated fixed the regulations that were2DL holding ettes Park, 496and Ferry Road, Edinburgh EH5 benefi ted from the opportunity, and back made the point that we are not the industry.’ out of the EULochavullin and that there is still life in theOban, EMFFArgyll, with one more er’, P.O. Box 1,yet Crannog Lane, Industrial Estate, PA34 4HB This remaining led on to aaft larger round er theconsortium, current one.with a 0) 1631 568001 Clockwise fromGroup, top right:and number ofof growers getting together at various He spoke other ventures, such as the Industry Leadership of world £95 including postage. All Air Mail.

ECSGA meeting; oyster; meetings andsh the idea of establishing said the Scotti government is pushingan forEast improvements in the consentrietors Wyvexing Media Ltd by Headley Brothers Ltd., ISSNB0262-9615 Dr Robert Rheault.

Coast Shellfish Growers Association was ban- edKent process, confi rming amendments toAshford, permitt development rights died about. They had seen how well organised the Pacific Coast Shellfish Growers Association m (PCSGA) had become, how effective they could be in meetings with regulators, how they focused government research dollars toward key problems – they wanted that.

While setting up the ECSGA, Skid continued to run his own company, farming and marketing oysters trading as Moonstone Oysters working out of Narragansett, Rhode Island, and he is still an adjunct faculty member in the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. He established the East Coast Shellfish Research Institute and has been successful in attracting several

26

12

012-013_ff03.indd 12

22

ASSG.indd 22

shellfish industry. with judges(from Nick Lake thanked Crown Estate Scotland for left to right): its sponsorship and the support too from SeafArmitage, Marian ish and Marine Scotland. substantial federal research grants to address critical industry research Dingwall, Nicki Ally The help of the Crown Estate to the induspriorities.

John Holmyard, try was in the first talk from Rod How has the ECSGA grown and also is it evident still growing?

Andy and Ogden Cappell, looking ‘business He was We grow in membership by about 10 toat20 per centdrivers’. a year and we Opposite de ng onbut research funded onfrachadPaola. a sharp increase thisreporti past year, we stillthey onlyhad have a small

16

clockwise from top page critical mass evaluati on of Scotti shellfion shthe tion- of the industry as members.

Of the estimated 1,300shfarms Ewing Fergus left: on.perThis wasThe essenti allyof looking at how East Coast, we only haveproducti about 15 cent. nature the industry

delegates; collaboration within a water body can give a addresses is such that many farmers are very small, part-time operations who hands Lake Nick synergy in producti bringof down costs, won’t pay dues. There are few large farms, on andand several these believe to Tom a cheque making businesses viable. they don’t need to join an association.

Theymore can hire their own lobbyist. of the RNLI; Kennedy modelled What are the main issuesThis facing ECSGA?different scenarios and indicatattendance; good useful guidance the size of ventures We spend a lot of time ed andsome energy dealing with on shellfish sanitation Richard to optimise returns. As in all models, however, prize winners issues.

Vibrio parahaemolyticus control seems to dominate much of my Shetland Tait ofWe depend on the variable time. are also trying results to rectify the trade waraccuracy with theofEU so wefaccan Judith Mussels, tors, such as the selling price of the product restore some of the lucrative connections we had in EU markets fiveand Caledonian Vajk ofago. costacknowledgement of inputs like seed,for butthe nevertheless years We are trying the to get ecosystem did and Craig Oysters, clearly indicate the benefi ts of such services we provide through nutrient credit trading, and wecollaboraare conof Islay Archibald tion, as are already found in Shetland. stantly working to improve water quality and expand harvest areas.

Richard Oysters; Allyin Dingwall, as aquaculture and fisheries Are there different chapters the ECSGA or are members mainly Michael Tait and manager for Sainsbury’s, is in charge of policy oyster folk? their best receiving thiscent area.

Sustainability is very thefarms We represent about 60inper clam farms, 40 per centmuch oyster Scottish mussels supermarket’s and there is a nascent mussel industry. keyword and, from what he said, prize from Dianne de sh shellfiabout sh havethe defi nite scope for growth I have heard you talk at Scotti conferences importance of lobbyPaola from the very low level of their current purchasing – what do you advise? and oysters not evendon’t yet input the you door!

It is really important toes, ensure that theare regulators out of Andrew of Neogen explained some business. If you are not involved the process of writing the regula3 inHolmes of the practi cal constraints behindthat the they rapidwill tions, then the law of unintended consequences dictates ngprotect for algalyourself. toxins toYou giveneed theirtousers better probably hurt you if you testi don’t participate of their limitati ons and their in the scientific research,comprehension the public outreach and the education of your benefi ts. growth in green jobs, the sustainable legislators. By demonstrating the 08/02/2013 11:24:01 The first day concluded withcan Andy DePaola, seafood production and the ecosystem benefits, we enlist the help from Alabama, talking his have experience of politicians when the regulators get crazy, or of if we a needworking of reUS FDAison norovirus,task. vibrio and other search dollars. Educatingwith the the legislators a constant There is huge ers of enforced sh growturnover and they know matt nothing about your concern industry.toIf shellfi you don’t have ers, to and then - in verytoentertaining form - on time to do it then you need pay someone do it for you.

This is why his current activitiassociations. es as an oyster farmer. Local busy professionals are members of trade growers could take comfort from the fact that Is export a major interest for your growers? notmarket such frequent visitors We are experiencing anhurricanes explosion are in the for oysters rightto as production to Alabama.to send overseas, but now, so there is not a lotScotland of surplus The second day started with a section headed ‘Working with Environmental Challenges’. Carwww.fishfarmer-magazine.com los Campos of Cefas in Weymouth spoke about the ShellEye project and the potential and limitations of using earth observation to track algal

48

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06/03/2015 10:29:56

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 16:31:43

Cultivating confidence

the point that we are not yet out of “Hethemade EU and there is still life in the EMFF ”

blooms and other aspects of water quality.

Sarah Brown of c2w tackled the issue of the invasive sea squirt, Didemnum vexillum, but was comfortingly upbeat about it since, with good biosecurity as is in place for disease control, it should be containable and ‘it isn’t the end of the world’.

Kati Michalek of SAMS, working on the CACHE project, looked back to four years ago when she first arrived from Germany, and now could report on her work on environmental variables and mussel stocks.

She was dealing with practical issues, which may indicate the importance of where mussel seed (that is, the environmental conditions of a particular site) is collected to give the best growing mussels long term.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

ASSG.indd 23

The final part of the conference programme dealt with Scottish initiatives, with a report on the progress of the mussel hatchery in Shetland

by Michael Tait and project officer Danny Cowling.

Robin Shields provided Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC) project updates and news of their Accelerating Aquaculture Innovations (AAI) funds.

Andrew Rowley from Swansea University talked about the ARCH UK network, in which he leads on shellfish aquaculture.

Stewart Graham, co-chair of the Scottish Aquaculture Industry Leadership group (AILG) and managing director of Gael Force Group, gave a suitably encouraging closing talk, telling the audience that growth depended on markets but also on the collaboration, alignment and growing together that the AILG can hopefully provide.

The delegates left well fed on the delicious seafood that underlined what Graham and many others had said at the conference: that there are new horizons ahead for the Scottish shellfish culture industry when the product is so good. FF

23

06/11/2017 16:32:04

Trade Associations – British Trout Association

Duties or development Time and money devoted to offsetting trade barriers could be better spent

BY DOUG MCLEOD

A

S a free market/free trade economist I’ve always had concerns about constraints on trade from policies such as tariff barriers, competitive devaluation, subsidisation, and so on, but remain equally concerned by some of the efforts to offset these measures.

One of the most frequently mentioned measures demanded by industries facing intense competitive pressure and loss of market share is that of ‘anti-dumping measures’.

While understanding the anguish of the suffering sectors, economists are usually concerned about the negative impacts of anti-dumping duties at the economy level, as they lead to higher consumer prices and harm downstream (eg. processing) industries in the importing countries.

In addition, I’ve always had doubts about the effectiveness and ‘value for effort’ resulting from pursuing an anti-dumping case through the relevant authorities, as the process usually turns into an ongoing lawyer festival with commensurately high fees.

I don’t know how many people in our industry remember the vociferous public campaign by the Scottish Salmon Growers Association, led by William Crowe, back in the 90s for an anti-dumping duty against salmon imports from Norway, the Faroe Islands and Chile.

Studies of the impact have cast doubt over the effectiveness of the duty, with one study concluding that it had done more to punish producers in the non-EU countries than reward EU producers, particularly the UK. Nevertheless, the process rumbled on, for example with Norway filing a complaint against the European Commission at the World Trade Organisation in 2006.

The US, which had imposed a similar anti-dumping duty/minimum import price on Norwegian salmon in 1992, finally revoked its measures in 2012; a study of the effectiveness of this 20-yearold policy concluded that it was ineffective as US production did not expand significantly and imports from Norway were replaced by imports from third countries.

Turning to the case of trout, producers within

24

BTA.indd 24

“Diversion of this

the European Union have not gone down the full anti-dumping route, but in 2014 requested the imposition of a countervailing duty to offset ‘illegal’ state aids, most notably a subsidy on trout production, in Turkey.

The Commission imposed such duties, ranging from 6.5 per cent to 9.5 per cent in late 2014, acknowledging that the subsidies were contrary to EU regulations on fair trading support.

The largest Turkish trout exporter has recently applied to the European Commission for a review and removal of the duties, arguing that the Turkish legislation relating to the subsidies had changed in 2016 so that there was no longer a conflict with the EU position.

A group of producer associations in European Union countries is opposing this request, as they believe that the overall picture of subsidisation in Turkey is one of higher support payments through a variety of mechanisms, even if the original legislation has been amended.

We await the response of the Commission to the arguments, initially as to whether there should be a review of the countervailing duty at all, considering the brief time that has elapsed since the original decision in 2014.

Nevertheless, while I acknowledge the lack of a level playing field created by the Turkish system of subsidies, my economics background continues to haunt me, and I worry that the legal fees and absorption of effort over this and next year might outweigh any potential benefit – certainly at a macro level there are logical arguments that any benefits to European producers will be marginal and short lived.

I can’t help thinking that diversion of this expenditure and effort to more innovative marketing activities and product development initiatives might prove more productive for the industry in the long run- particularly as, following Brexit, the boot may be on the other foot, with UK support mechanisms being perceived as ‘illegal state aid’ and resulting in tariff barriers being raised. FF

expenditure and effort to more innovative marketing activities might prove more productive

”

Above: Rainbow trout on ice

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:49:53

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06/11/2017 12:02:40

Industry platform

BY NIKOS STEIROPOULOS

How far can we go?

Action required at all levels to meet production targets

T

HE recent publication of the Scottish government’s Fish Farm Production survey for 2016 was the true definition of a mixed bag. Headcount is growing, with an additional 123 staff being employed in production, while the number of companies operating in salmon farming is also up. Meanwhile, the number of sites is holding steady at 87.

However, we have also witnessed a decline in productivity, with the tonnage of fish produced falling five per cent from 171,722 tonnes in 2015 down to 162,817 tonnes in 2016. This includes a reduction in the number of smolts produced and, unfortunately, a decrease in smolt survival, which is bad news.

Smolt quality is of utmost importance - a good smolt is half the battle won. Sadly, in addition to this reduction in smolt survival, the survey also showed reductions in the mean weight of salmon being produced.

Against the backdrop of these figures, it’s difficult to say how the industry will meet its ambitious target of producing 350,000 tonnes of finfish by 2030. The 2017 forecast for salmon production predicts modest growth to 177,202 tonnes, leaving us some way short of the target.

However, what I’ve learned from my years in aquaculture is never to underestimate the ingenuity and skill of those working in the sector.

Salmon aquaculture has risen to a number of challenges – most notably sea lice – and emerged stronger.

The strategic plan for Aquaculture Growth for 2030 has identified barriers to growth and has actioned initiatives towards strengthening industry leadership and ambition, acceleration of innovation, development of skills and proportionate regulation.

Three of these areas are, in my view, particularly vital to the fortunes of the sector.

Producers, with the support of fish health professionals, have done much to reduce the recent impact of sea lice issues, which led to high

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Nikos.indd 26

Opposite from top: Europharma participates in collaborative research aimed at improving rapid diagnostic methods

mortality rates and controversy over farming practices.

Indeed, we’ve seen an increase in production figures for both lumpsuckers and wrasse, which is welcome and forms part of the sea lice eradication effort alongside the solutions of mechanical removal.

But the key to fish health remains early diagnosis and training in fish health and welfare, supported by the prudent use of the pharmaceutical portfolio as and when required.

Several new preventive strategies based on vaccination have recently been introduced to confront bacterial and viral challenges, yet the next major health challenge seems to be gill health. And the problem goes beyond the relatively well-known issues, including amoebic gill disease (AGD), that the industry has gradually learned to deal with.

The causes are complex and require further research to fully identify impacting factors, both of biotic and abiotic nature.

In recognition of the significance of innovation towards gill health challenge - and the implementation of successful strategies to mitigate sea lice – Europharma’s UK team is participating in collaborative research aimed at improving rapid diagnostic methods, and also investigating environmental factors that impact on these gill syndromes.

Regulation Scotland Food and Drink’s strategy for aquaculture aspires to see the industry’s contribution to the Scottish economy escalating from £1.8 billion in 2016, to £3.6 billion by 2030, with the generation of more than of 9,000 new jobs.

There is great growth potential in export markets but I fear we might miss such opportunities if the growth in the Scottish industry is restricted by disproportionate regulation.

We’ve already seen key industry figures such as Craig Anderson at the Scottish Salmon

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06/11/2017 15:48:27

How far can we go?

brand for Scottish food and drink, as well as being one of our most important employers in rural and island communities.

Finally, we need to raise our game in terms of our public relations activity and to ensure the sector speaks with one voice, challenging the poor science which is often thrown at the industry by its detractors.

That means we need to get considerably better at talking up our own achievements – both in a scientific and research sense, but also about the overwhelming benefit we bring to the Scottish economy.

The Scottish aquaculture industry (to paraphrase Michael Josephson) should take pride in how far we have come and have faith and determination in how far we can go.

It’s my contention that with action in all these areas, there’s no reason why our industry can’t continue to grow and put more of our product on dinner tables across the globe.

Nikos Steiropoulos is CEO of Europharma Scotland. FF Company call for radical change in the way the industry is regulated. One pertinent example cited is the length of time taken to get planning permission and the appropriate licences for new farms. Such delays cost companies valuable time and money, while directly holding back production.

The need for proportionate regulation and a more enabling approach from regulators was also visited in detail in Scotland’s new Industry Leadership Group (ILG) for aquaculture in its inaugural meeting earlier this year.

The attendance of Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing was a firm recognition of the potential for industry and different parts of the public sector to collaborate effectively to support sustainable growth in a key industry for Scotland.

Indisputably, the Scottish government has been very supportive of the salmon farming industry. Yet it’s also clear that more can be done to support a sector that is a marque

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“

More can be done to support a sector that is one of our most important employers in rural communities

”

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06/11/2017 15:48:48

Containment – Grieg Seafood Shetland

Testing

times

Grant Cumming oversees big changes after tough year of biological challenges

W

HEN Grant Cumming says ‘there’s a lot happening’ on his farm sites it turns out to be something of an understatement.

Since taking over as managing director of Grieg Seafood in Shetland nearly a year ago, he has overseen a new production plan, introduced a more varied treatment strategy for sea lice, algae and gill health problems, and added an array of ‘tools’ to deal with challenges that have hit the company.

Grieg’s Scottish farms recorded a drop in total harvested volume in 2016 to 13,541 tonnes, compared to 16,370 tonnes in 2015. And at the end of October this year, figures revealed that lice levels at some of the company’s sites had exceeded government thresholds.

Cumming admits it’s been ‘a pretty tough year biologically’, which has led to the lower volumes, higher mortality rates and an increase in production costs.

In fact, the one relatively trouble free area has been predation and escapes, which used to give Grieg major headaches.

‘Touch wood but we haven’t had any containment issues from our fish farms,’ said Cumming. ‘It’s all working pretty well.

Left: Grieg Seafood managing director Grant Cumming (Picture: Gary Buchan).

Above: The Grieg team at work

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Testing times

We haven’t become 100 “ per cent seal proof but what we’ve become is probably too much trouble

”

‘We’ve got eco nets in the Wadbister area, we’ve got HDPE predator nets in Scalloway that are functioning very well too, and up in Setter Ness, Whalsay and Gonfirth, and Skye, we have either terylene netting or monofilament nylon with 150 kilo breaking strain. That just means we can keep the panels much tighter on the nets- more tension on the panels and less on the ropes, which means it’s much tougher for seals to grab fish through.

‘We haven’t had much of a predation problem because of that – I think January 2015 is the last time we had to shoot a seal. Long may it continue!’

This is a far cry from the days when Grieg’s sites, especially near Lerwick harbour, were like a ‘Macdonald’s’ for the seal population. Since then,

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investment mainly in physical barriers had more or less seen off the threat.

‘The physical barriers are our first line of defence; so as long as there are no issues at all we just use those. If we start to see any seal nips on our salmon then we do use the acoustics as well.

‘We haven’t become 100 per cent seal proof but what we’ve become is probably too much trouble so right now they’re finding easier food sources to eat than our salmon.’

If only the same could be said for parasites.

Sea lice, along with poor gill health, have tested Grieg’s resources in the past year.

‘Our autumn 15 crop were very badly hit with gill issues so we had a reduced tonnage in Q1 because of that,’ said Cumming. ‘And we had

some very expensive fish to harvest in Q1 because of the gill issues.

‘But sea lice was a challenge for us as well on the 16 spring crop, particularly in Scalloway, possibly due to the warm waters we saw in spring. We didn’t see the temperatures drop nearly as much as we would normally have and the sea lice challenge carried on through winter and spring, it didn’t die away as it had in previous years.

‘We ended up having to treat much more often than we would have expected and that leads to a lot of pre-treatment feed withdrawal, which in turn means you’ve got lower growth and smaller fish.

‘We just found ourselves going round and round and having far more pre-treatment fasting than we’d hoped to have.’

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06/11/2017 15:46:36

Containment – Grieg Seafood Shetland With the new Millbrook hatchery at Girlsta they are aiming for an average of 180g smolts – ‘it’s working pretty well, we’re maybe not quite at 180 yet but we’re averaging about 165g.’

The results are already positive – ‘We’re seeing that our autumn crop of fish is faring much better than our previous two autumn inputs. We seem to be getting better at managing algae.’

Developing an early warning system will, said Cumming, help address the problems they have had with algae, which tend to lead to complex gill disease.

‘We’ll do PCR [polymerase chain reaction] swabbing every two weeks on our fish – that’s giving us early indications of the appearance of gill amoeba and branchiomanas, as well as other gill health pathogens.

‘By being aware of the presence of these pathogens before we start seeing clinical signs we can get in there early and we can nip these things in the bud. By bringing the hydrogen peroxide treatments forward we’ve avoided complex gill disease forming in the first place.

‘It’s an early warning system that’s allowing us but certainly for Shetland we see lumpfish being to react faster, which is preventing us getting to the way forward. the stage of having the clinical signs. What we’re ‘There seems to be enough lumpfish available finding is that once the clinical signs are apparent now within the UK for us to meet our needs which it’s very difficult to bring the fish back, the damage is great.’ is already done.

Cleaner fish are used in conjunction with new ‘We’re also on the verge of beginning freshwater farming practices aimed at making sites more treatments as well and we expect that to make a robust. big difference.

‘We have made quite a few alterations to our ‘That’s something we haven’t done until now so production plan,’ said Cumming. ‘We’re looking at we’re due to make a start next week (beginning much longer fallow periods now and we have an October 16). It is much milder on the fish, it’s less agreement with our neighbours up here (Scottish stressful, a gentler treatment. It’s also very effective Sea Farms) to have a three month area fallow for for sea lice as well as for gill health.’

Scalloway – it’s a long time since we fallowed the Grieg acquired a new wellboat, the Martin Saele, Cumming deployed a mixture of treatments on full area for three months so this should be a big which will pump water on board from a reservoir of that crop of fish, including warm water bathing, step forward.’ with Thermolicer and Optilicer systems. The OptilicAlso, from January, the entire input for the whole freshwater in Shetland.

‘We’ve got freshwater but it’s still limited, we’d er, which Grieg has on long-term hire, works on the of Scalloway will be protected with sea lice skirts for like more around Shetland. We still have a logistics same principle as the Thermolicer. the first time.

‘If you’re aware of the anaesthetic bins used for ‘And we’ll have aeration [upwelling of deep water] issue with transferring it to the right place.’

Cumming said they’re not moving pens of anaesthetising the fish for vaccination, it just looks which keeps the water inside the lice skirt well freshwater around at the moment, as some other like a massive one of those. oxygenated but also reduces the risk of algae occur‘The fish are going into a warm water bath, rences and should help us keep down the numbers farmers do, but that may happen in the future. And nor are they currently looking at reverse osmosis on there’s a paddle that takes them through that bath of planktonic sea lice. their wellboats, though that is also something that in a set time period. So it’s about 20 degrees above ‘These tend to be in the top 5-6m of water so by may be considered. ambient and 30 seconds immersion. continually upwelling deep water we hope to stay ‘We will continue to use the PCR sampling to ‘It’s really identical principles to the Thermolicer sea lice free for longer.’ but rather than swimming through a pipe they go Aeration is becoming more common in the indus- guide us as to when is the best time [to deploy freshwater treatments] but at certain points of the into a bath. It has very similar results to the Thertry, said Cumming, who plans to have coverage on year we may decide to strategically treat a whole molicer. It’s a very good means of treatment.’ all sites. Virtually all the systems are from Pentair area to reduce overall either lice loading or gill Grieg Seafood is also involved in a lumpfish and CPI [Pumps] – ‘these are working for us very project, and expects to eventually produce all the well, but we’re still evaluating which of the systems health pathogen loading.

‘I can see that becoming a common feature. The stocks it needs in Shetland. are the best. It’s still quite early for us.’ wellboat will be following a pre-designed pattern ‘We’re getting much better at producing lumpfish Grieg’s strategy to cut the production cycle from in our hatchery – we buy them in as fry from 24 to 18 months is in full swing now, said Cumming. where we’re reacting much faster to the changes in Benchmark and we take them through to the size ‘That would have started with the 2016 spring in- the environment and hopefully avoiding complex where we would stock them with the fish ourselves. put so normally we would have still been harvesting gill disease occurring in the first place.’

To try to improve its algal monitoring, all sites have ‘We’re managing to put out in the last few batch- the spring input fish probably up to December and a microscope, and the staff take samples and count es around 150,000 a batch and we can produce then restocking in March but we’ve brought that and classify the species of algae and phytoplankton four batches a year. That’s not enough for us to all forward so that area fallowed out in September be self-sufficient so we will still be working with and we have a much longer fallow period now. And in the water before they make a decision as to whether or not to feed. external suppliers. we’ll go back in in January.

‘But it’s quite a detailed and technical job for ‘We need about 800,000 fish to be self-sufficient, ‘By speeding up the growth rates and using bigger which is more than we can do at the moment oursmolts, we can minimise the time in the sea… that’s guys who maybe don’t have a lot of experience of academic work so we’re backing that up by having a selves. We may use some wrasse on the mainland the high risk period as we see it.’

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06/11/2017 15:47:08

Testing times plankton expert based both in Shetland and in Skye who have access to a SeaFlow microscope,’ said Cumming.

‘The idea is that every site at the end of the day will be bringing samples in to a central point and then a plankton expert will be analysing them using image analysis techniques so we can process a much bigger sample and take samples from different depths and get a much fuller picture of the plankton that’s in the water and they can give our guys on site a simple traffic light system.’

A green light will mean it’s okay to go ahead and feed without waiting for the sample report; with an amber light, staff would sample as normal and then make a decision as to whether to feed or not; and if they get a red light they wouldn’t feed until they are certain it’s okay to feed.

‘By avoiding feeding when we have dangerous plankton in the water we can keep fish below the high concentrations of the algae and prevent gill damage starting in the first place.’

Cumming said the system is about to go live, with the experts hired and image analysis microscopes acquired. They are currently building up a library of pictures so the software can identify the plankton accurately and efficiently, and once this library is big enough – in the next couple of weeks- they can begin to sample all the areas every day.

With so many changes in husbandry as well as technology, Cumming has had a hectic inauguration as Grieg’s MD. He can’t give production forecasts yet for this year but the approach is a cautious one and ambitions for the moment are modest, with a reduction of sites, including Wadbister, which is no longer going to produce harvest size fish.

‘We’re cutting back our expectations in Shetland because we haven’t performed well enough and we feel that we need to concentrate our resources on looking after the fish we do put to sea as best we can.

‘The long fallow will obviously have an impact on production levels and so will the rebalancing of our sites.

‘We’re having a particular issue on fall input fish and avoiding gill health challenges on those so we’ll be concentrating our fall input on the sites that have the highest currents because we’ve seen that that seems to help protect us against gill health issues.

‘Our rebalancing of the production plan will also lead to a reduction in production levels so we will be at a lower level for 2018 as well.

‘We’re talking about a 20 per cent reduction of what our production plans were, to make sure we get back on top of both sea lice and gill health, and then once we’ve got both of those under control we’ll look to build those levels back up again.’

Another change mooted under Cumming’s command is a return to the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation, after being ousted from the organisation more than three years ago for importing Norwegian smolts against the protocols of the industry’s Code of Good Practice.

‘I think it makes sense for all of the bodies in Scotland to be speaking with a single voice – there’s nothing decided yet but I think it would be good if we were presenting a united front.’ FF

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Grieg.indd 31

EU workers crucial to company

We’re “talking

about a 20 per cent reduction to make sure we get back on top of both sea lice and gill health

”

Opposite top: Jakub Pierzynowski, Grieg Seafood fish veterinarian and also one of its EU nationals.

Opposite below: Gerda Saele - here fitted with hydrogen peroxide tanks, although the vessel can also be fitted with two Optilicers

GRIEG, like many farming companies, has a high proportion of immigrant workers and Grant Cumming is concerned about the implications of Brexit.

‘We’re very heavily reliant on our EU workers. Our processing plant will be over 50 per cent EU workers and we’re round about 50 per cent as well in our hatchery,’ he said.

‘We’ve got a lot of graduate level educated people from the EU working with us. There are several key positions that are filled with EU nationals.

‘Shetland is in rather a unique position where we have very low unemployment and we don’t have access to a big enough workforce to do everything Shetland does.

‘Aside from that we have a need for really quite specialist skill sets which you can’t always find easily within a small community. The irony is that we often find it’s easier to persuade people to move to Shetland from Europe than we do from the UK. ‘I have a feeling that when people in the UK are looking at Shetland on the map they think it’s like moving overseas, whereas if you’re a European citizen in Spain or France you’re thinking I’m going overseas anyway so it doesn’t matter very much.’

Some EU nationals have been in Shetland for a long time and are very well integrated into their communities.

‘Many have a family living here and their kids are going to school here, they’re here for the long term,’ said Cumming. ‘We don’t have many people here for the short term.

‘I really hope they’ll be fine but I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen under Brexit – it’s a worry for them, this lack of clarity, but I think there’s a general optimism that the people who are here will be allowed to remain here.

‘We would really struggle if they weren’t allowed to remain here so we’ll do everything we can to hold on to our EU workers.’

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06/11/2017 15:47:31

Containment – AquaMoor

Chain

reaction New market in Norway offers insight into technical compliance

W

HEN AquaMoor took a space on the Scottish stand at Aqua Nor in August it was with a mission to do business with its domestic market but also to explore export opportunities.

It was successful on both counts, and a trip back to Norway swiftly followed the Trondheim show. Now the two-year-old firm has secured a significant distributor for its anchors in the lucrative Norwegian market.

But the experience has also given AquaMoor founder and managing director Lawrie Stove an insight into the Norwegian technical standard – and how Scotland’s own standard compares.

Stove, then working for Gael Force, sat on the steering committee that devised the Scottish Technical Standard (STS) and is still involved as it undergoes revision, prior to implementation in 2020.

‘Every new product, in order to sell in Norway, has to be compliant with their standard,’ he said. ‘It’s similar to ISO certification but specifically related to aquaculture – the company has to be certified to be compliant with NS 9415, and then any product the company sells needs to be certified. It’s a fairly straightforward process but also time consuming.’

He doesn’t want the name of his new Norwegian partner made public yet but said it is a big supplier with 10 offices throughout Norway. It will initially distribute AquaMoor’s direct embedment Alpha anchor, an innovative product that is novel in Norway.

‘They said they have farm sites that need the Alpha, and that they could work with us, which is awesome. We went back to Norway in September to have some discussions with their technical people, and also

Left: The Raptor anchor.

Above: Lawrie Stove with Terry A’Hearn of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency at Aqua Nor in August

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to start the process in motion to get the screw anchor certified and approved.

‘We’ve had discussions already about what is required in terms of giving them drawings, sending them samples for testing, and then we’ll need to arrange a demonstration test on site.

‘That is the Norwegian government doing due diligence on the product and if it does what we say it will do, they’ll issue a certificate for it.

And that will enable any company in Norway that is certified to supply equipment under the Norwegian standard to import, distribute and install that product.’

Stove said there are locations in Norway – similar to places in Scotland such as Harris and Lewis – where the physical footprint for the farm is quite limited and there is therefore a demand for alternative anchorage solutions.

‘You don’t have space to use a drag embedment anchor because you need long chain catenary on it…they need something that’s shorter scope and the Alpha fits the bill.’

But that doesn’t mean the anchor will just be used at existing sites. In Norway, the Sintef research organisation has demonstration sites in high energy areas and Stove said that, through AquaMoor’s new partners, they will test their

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Chain reaction

anchors on these sites too.

‘That tends to be a two-year project but we also need to do things that bring money in as well as spending money on R&D. So at some sites there are opportunities to sell anchors straight away and there are others where there are opportunities to work with the authorities in Norway to develop the product.’

He said demand for the Alpha will hopefully be followed by interest in the Raptor anchor, and also the Stingray double shank anchor, which attracted much attention at Aqua Nor. But the firm’s new Norwegian partner is already buying Stingrays direct from the manufacturers in Australia.

‘That’s good they’ve chosen it because it’s the best performing anchor but bad because they’re not going to buy it from us! But it’s a good validation of the technology and it’s a good meeting of minds.’

AquaMoor is primarily an analysis, design and engineering company and subcontracts manufacturing and fabrication.

‘We do product design and development, and then subcontract engineers. We think it’s better to do that independently.’

Stove has noticed that a number of small startups seem to have done better overseas than

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Aqua Moor.indd 33

From five different sources they’ve got five “different specifications so the poor farmer is none the wiser ”

they have in the domestic market, perhaps because the bigger companies that do everything have cornered the local scene, making it difficult for ‘upstarts’ to infiltrate.

He has worked in the marine industry since 1990 and in anchoring and mooring for 15 years, and his expertise, on top of his products, is valued by the Norwegians. They have asked AquaMoor to explain the direct embedment anchor and mooring system to ensure it gets incorporated into the Norwegian standard, which became law more than 10 years ago and is currently under revision.

It takes time, and money, to review a technical standard and Stove believes there should be some mechanism within the STS for the inclusion of new products as they come on the market.

‘We’ve been asked [by customers] if our new technology is complying with the Scottish Technical Standard but it’s not in there yet. If

companies innovate and there’s a direct impact on security or containment there should be a means of incorporating this into the standard, without having a full blown review.’

The STS has not yet gone to legislation and there is an argument to have it incorporated into the industry’s self-regulating Code of Good Practice, at least as an interim measure. Any new legislation at present would have to negotiate the EU, and then the added complications of Brexit.

‘Everybody is audited for compliance with the Code of Good Practice on a whole range of things. Containment could be included in that,’ said Stove.

‘It has worked with a lot of other issues, there is a lot of information that is reported into the public domain – lice treatment and fish escapes for instance. If you know where to look, you can find all that information. Most of the planning process is public too.

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Containment – AquaMoor

Above and opposite: Stingray anchors, which are distributed by AquaMoor

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‘The only downside of self-regulation is there will always be companies who decide they’ll just take the risk and won’t spend the money if they don’t have to…if it’s voluntary compliance.

‘However, if someone has a containment issue and fish escape it’s bad for the whole industry, so there is a bit of peer pressure.’

He said the biggest issue for compliance is safety and the cost of contingency, and he would like to see Scotland adopt the Norwegian approach of separating the people who do the moorings analysis from the people who supply commercial equipment.

AquaMoor provides engineering analysis to customers as well as products, but Stove said under the Norwegian system companies are allowed to offer both services if the two functions are kept separate.

‘In Norway, all the big equipment suppliers have either partnered with an engineering consultancy or set up their own company that just does the engineering analysis at an arm’s length.

‘There’s a provision in the Norwegian technical standard that says it’s okay for a company to do both activities so long as they can demonstrate through ISO procedures that people sitting at that end of the office do analysis and do not provide any commercial interaction with customers, although they speak to the same people.’

The Norwegian company distributing Aqua-

Moor’s anchors has a team of six engineers in its consultancy part of the business and they are not authorised to engage in any commercial discussions.

‘That is the sort of integrity I want to see brought in by the STS. It doesn’t mean it’s more costly, it means farmers aren’t getting ripped off.

And it means that the equipment that is used for moorings has been professionally analysed and dimensioned and somebody with £10 million of PI insurance is happy to underwrite it. That would give farmers a better deal on equipment because it’s a more appropriate specification without this fudge factor being introduced.’

The ‘fudge factor’, said Stove, is when the equipment supplier can say to the farmer, ‘I’ve done the analysis for you and the mooring system you need to be safe is going to cost you £200,000’. But the farmer can go to another supplier who used an independent engineer to do the analysis and has specified a mooring system that’s going to cost £120,000.

‘There’s a client in Scotland for whom we’ve provided engineering analysis through a third party, and based on that, we’ve provided a quote.

‘The client says they’ve got quotes from other suppliers who’ve done their own analysis, one from the Faroes who used a consultant in Norway, two quotes from two Norwegian suppliers who’ve used engineering analysis from Norway, and our quote.

‘From five different sources they’ve got five different specifications so the poor farmer is none the wiser. If there was a change to the way the standard worked, so it required third party verification, all the farmers would benefit. They would get far more economical quotes.’

Stove said high factors of safety within the STS could lead to Scottish farmers being supplied with material that is a higher spec than what’s recommended by a Faroese and several Norwegians.

‘The higher the factor of safety, the more gear the farmer has to buy.

Companies are fudging it because they haven’t done a proper engineer-

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Chain reaction

ing analysis and are therefore building in higher safety specifications.

Farmers are being over charged as suppliers play on their fears.

‘They shouldn’t be buying equipment because that’s what it says in the STS but because an engineer has done a proper analysis and the conclusion is these are the forces you can expect to see on the site and you should have appropriate equipment to remove the risk of containment issues.’

He said all the salmon companies in Scotland bar one are going to Norwegian engineering consultancies to get analysis done because they’re not comfortable with the homemade analysis done in Scotland.

‘There is an element of the Norwegian parent company saying this is what we do.

‘They can see they’re getting cheaper quotes and they’ve been asking us why is it so different, and they get told by Scottish suppliers that it’s a risk to buy, say, smaller rope. That’s not best practice.’

Stove finds that most of the Scottish farmers he speaks to are already compliant with the recommendations of the Scottish Technical Standard.

‘They say, we understand what it’s all about, there isn’t anything in the Code of Good Practice covering this part of our operations so we’ll just follow what’s in the standard and we’re requesting our suppliers do the same.

‘There’s been a very positive uptake. They know they’ve got issues that need addressing and are happy to adopt suggestions in the standard, and they think, ‘Why wait until 2020, we’ll start now’.

What he also learnt during his trip to Norway in September was that installing equipment there involves very thorough testing.

‘You have to install trial anchors on the site and take a load reading from that. You actually have to provide evidence that the anchor does what you say it will do. It has to be tested to 60 per cent of its working load.

‘When you do an ROV inspection in Scotland after an installation you get video footage of an anchor that’s upside down on the seabed because it’s just been dropped over the side of a boat. Under the Norwegian standard that would be picked up straight away.

‘You’re validating the engineering analysis and calculations. In Scotland you get a lorry load of equipment so you’ll be safe but you can do what you like with it.’

Stove said AquaMoor’s raison d’etre in terms of the design and engineering is to innovate.

‘There is an opportunity for innovation in moorings. The fact that we’ve had success in the Norwegian market is because we produced something that does not exist in Norway. We’ve come under scrutiny and we passed the test.’

With a market ten times bigger than the domestic market, the company

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is obviously eager to seize the day. Stove is even learning Norwegian: ‘I’ve got a long way to go but it would be really useful to sit in a meeting and know what people are saying!’. FF

know they’ve got issues that “People need addressing and are happy to adopt suggestions in the standard ”

COPPENS A

Q

U

A

C

E

N

T

R

E

RAS based technology 107 tanks Accurate research Dedicated team Sustainable innovation

Check out the video!

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06/11/2017 15:43:24

Containment – Ace Aquatec

BY NATHAN PYNE-CARTER

Seal of approval Innovation is key to success says award winning firm

S

COTTISH firm Ace Aquatec, already the winner of the Aqua Nor 2017 and the SAIC 2016 awards, is continuing to make advances in aquaculture innovation.

The company, now based in Dundee, is developing its seal mitigation arsenal to maximise the effectiveness of its Cage Guard rental offering.

After an extended period of assessment on restricted sites by St Andrew’s University and Scottish Sea Farms, early indications are that the RT1 acoustic deterrent has no impact on cetaceans, but a high impact on seals.

The initial system was built using high power low frequency noise between 1-2khz. This falls outside the sensitive hearing of porpoises but within the sensitive hearing of seals, making the RT1 the only deterrent system to date appropriate for protected sites in Scotland and worldwide.

Used in combination with US3s on normal sites, this system has proved highly effective at keeping seals away.

The US3 makes noise in the 10-20 khz band and continues to have its sound patterns expanded, with remote updates occurring in real time across the Ace portal.

New upgrades prepare the system for silent operation in readiness for the roll-out of Ace’s sonar triggering system. More than 200 US3s are currently in operation in Scotland, with excellent results.

The Ace Aquatec portal has continued to provide access 24/7 to deterrents, enabling the company and farm sites to guarantee and evaluate system operation.

The portal provides a home for the plethora of systems working together to deter seals from fish farms while providing farms and managers with a tool to adjust and calibrate their systems.

Also in the anti-predator arsenal is the electric net Mk1, which has proved highly effective at Cooke and Scottish Sea Farm test sites; the Mk2 design will be deployed this winter.

Uniquely, the electric net pairs negative electric shocks with an acoustic signal. Initial results suggest that contact with the net electrodes conditions the seals to avoid the net.

“fishElectric can be

used to provide a targeted electric shock to opportunistic seals

”

Above: The electric fish; Cage Guard.Left: The Ace portal offers more control

36

Ace Aquatec.indd 36

Electric fish This winter sees the first deployment of the hotly anticipated electric fish. Using the same principles as the electric net, the fish simulates a mort on the bottom of the cage and can be used to provide a targeted electric shock to opportunistic seals.

In combination with acoustics, the electric systems teach seals to avoid net enclosures.

The company also produces sonar triggers, which have been in development since 2012.

This year the first triggered systems will start to be deployed at selected rental sites. This system intends to reduce noise of any sort, while increasing the impact of targeted noise on seals.

The Scottish industry has subscribed to the Cage Guard model since 2015, and this year sees Ace Aquatec’s first deployments in Chile and Canada, targeting sealions.

A tougher predator than the UK’s grey and common seals, the Rt1 and US3 combination has successfully deterred these predators.

Looking ahead, Ace Aquatec is now stepping up production of its deterrent rental systems in order to serve the Chilean and Canadian markets.

Nathan Pyne-Carter is managing director of Ace Aquatec. FF

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:41:19

DESIGN • SERVICE • EQUIPMENT Today’s modern aquaculture farmer needs a partner that is able to help with the scope and variety of challenges they face every day. That is why Pentair AES has assembled a team of experts with diverse backgrounds in aquaculture, biological and technological engineering that is grounded in decades of research and commercial industry application experience. We help our customers run successful operations by providing the design expertise they need, a responsive service team and the largest selection of equipment and supplies in the industry. Trust in a team that’s here to help you—ASK US!

PentairAES.com • +1 407.886.3939

Untitled-1 37

© 2017 Pentair Aquatic Eco-Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

06/11/2017 12:05:13

Containment – Fusion Marine

Moving to the future

Old pens recycled to meet demands of modern sites

G

OOD containment is not just about purchasing the best possible equipment, but also ensuring that it is well maintained and regularly upgraded whenever required, says fish pen manufacturer Fusion Marine.

The Argyll based company has been busy supplying salmon pens and other equipment to several Scottish and Irish farm sites over the past year, including ‘upcycling’ projects using material from redundant pens to construct new, modernised ones.

The pen recycling involves reusing the flotation rings from older two-ring pens for the manufacture of new three-ring Triton 400 pens, which have a larger circumference. All the other materials are recycled.

Such upgrade and refurbishment work is proving particularly popular among aquaculture companies and provides a cost-effective and environmentally friendly solution that incorporates the latest designs and technologies.

Rhuaraidh Edwards, technical design engineer for Fusion Marine, said: ‘This delivers a wide range of benefits to the customer, including the responsible and convenient disposal of old pens, reduced final product cost and the upgrade to a stronger pen with a larger circumference.’

On the export side, Fusion Marine has recently been involved in farm installation projects in Madeira, Malta, Sri Lanka, Algeria, the Canaries and Mexico.

For Malta, Fusion Marine secured an important contract to refurbish and upgrade Triton tuna pens for relocation to a new offshore site.

Meanwhile, working closely with Kames Fish Farming and other clients, Fusion Marine has been involved in an exciting new project to install new farms in exposed offshore sites in Madeira for bass and bream farming.

As the Portuguese aquaculture sector embarks upon new expansion, the tough and durable design of Fusion Marine equipment is ideal for such high energy sea sites.

In another project with Kames, Fusion Marine is working on the next

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Fusion.indd 38

We are continually involved in “new development initiatives to enhance containment ”

phase of the development of a fish farm at Trincomalee harbour in Sri Lanka. Both companies were involved with the initial farm installation back in 2014.

Fusion Marine is also currently looking at projects in the Canaries and Mexico to upgrade existing farm infrastructure to cope with the demanding sea conditions found in such places, so as to maximise stock containment, improve operator welfare, boost production and enhance the overall sustainability of these businesses.

‘We are continually involved in new development initiatives to enhance containment, given this future trend to move to more exposed offshore sites,’ ’ said Stephen Divers, managing director of Fusion Marine.

Above: Managing director Such work has been enhanced by the recent Stephen Divers relocati on of the Fusion Marine office to the Left & Top: Triton cages.

European Science Park in Dunbeg near Oban.

The move will enable the company to benefit from the synergies created by being part of the cluster of scientific expertise at Dunbeg, aiding in aquaculture research and development programmes.. FF

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:40:25

SuperSmolt® Feed Only – All the benefits, now simpler

The new SuperSmolt® Feed Only programme additionally delivers: • REDUCED EFFORT – All the benefits of SuperSmolt® without the need for mineral treatments.

• INCREASED PLANNING AGILITY – The programme can now also be applied in freshwater loch cages.

For the last 10 years, the Scottish Aquaculture industry have been using the SuperSmolt® programme to produce tens of millions of optimally smoltified salmon from tank-based systems. SuperSmolt® continues to provide clear benefits for both smolt producers and ongrowers:

Flexibility SuperSmolt® fish never desmoltify, giving you greater control over seawater transfer dates.

Improved health and welfare SuperSmolt® reduces stress, disease susceptibility and mortality following transfer.

Better smolts SuperSmolt® fish come on to feed quicker and more evenly post transfer.

Design / Trykk:

Europharma Scotland Ltd Clydebank Business Park G81 2QP Ph: +44 (0) 141 4357 100 supersmolt@europharma-uk.com

med helse som fag

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06/11/2017 12:06:31

.no / Andenes

Contact the Europharma Scotland Team for further information:

Aqua Knowledge – Advertorial

BY DAVE EDLER

Knowledge

base

Positive response to the launch of Aquacom

T

HE Norwegian consultant company Aqua Knowledge has spent the Ole Matre is in charge of the Aquacom system last year transforming its well known MMCD database into the new and has been responsible for the latest develmodule based web application Aquacom. The improved system was opments. launched in August this year at Aqua Nor and, according to Aqua ‘We have been working closely with our Knowledge’s managing director, Yngve Askeland, the response from new current and current users has been ‘solely positi ve’.

The planner module can also be set up with statistic wave data for an actual fish farm site. This gives database users in the development process,’ he said. ‘The number one priority has planning, certi cation, maintenance, anTechnical opportunity to plan a ficomplete productiondocumentati cycle basedononand statistical wave data. This is also useful always been to ensure that the system is user operational planning is fully integrated into the Aquacom family, which for evaluation of future potential new sites. friendly and intuitive, while at the same time consists of the following modules: offshore, onshore, vessels and planner.

The modules can be operated independently or put together as one Below: Aquacom planner Basis for the planner module is a 2-year Norwegian research project that aims to solve variousadvanced enough to give you all the necessary information on the technical status on a single tool for the complete value chain from hatchery to processing plant. screenshot challenges regarding running of exposed fish farm locations. The project is conducted by Aquapage.

‘The fish farming industry is in a state of constant evolution and of Knowledge in collaboration from UnibeResearch Polytec and the Norwegian fish ‘We now have three different modules to course the industry tools mustwith keepresearches up and, if possible, ahead of the farming Bremnesrequirements,’ Seashore. Askeland said. ‘The Aquacom cover land facilities, vessels and marine sites. industrycompany and governmental We have also developed the innovative planner system is now able to cover all technical equipment with regards to certiAquacom planner screenshot module, which enables fish farmers to plan fish fication, maintenance and follow-up on sea and land based facilities.’ farming operations based on a ten days wave forecast. Together, these four modules represent the new improved Aquacom database.’

Several new modules will be developed over the coming years, reveals Matre. ‘We have a leading position in the market today because we work closely with the industry and never stop developing the system to meet with the industry needs.’

The offshore module (formerly MMCD) has been a valuable tool for many fish farmers since its launch in 2011. All the technical components, both over and underwater, can be placed in the offshore module and the users get instant access to all certificates, expiration dates, technical specifications, checklists and user manuals. The technical components can easily be moved from one site to another without any loss of historical data. If the user has access to several marine sites they can, on one single page, get an updated technical status for all marine sites in their company. The company overview page shows all open deviations, expired certificates and other important matters. The system can also auto

https://vimeo.com/233892117 40

Aqua Knowledge.indd 40

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:38:13

Knowledge base

Aqua Knowledge’s main services Technical analysis Aqua Knowledge holds the Norwegian accreditation for mooring analysis.

This accreditation is valid for all types of fish farms and feed barges. The mooring analysis report contains the recommended dimensioning of all mooring components. Aqua Knowledge also performs detailed technical analysis of fish farming nets to evaluate all loads within the net structure.

page, have an updated technical status of all mar

overview page will show all open deviations, expi Wave analysis system can also autogenerate a weekly report for The company can perform analysis and calculations of leaders. wind generated waves and ocean swells, and can also include diffraction and refraction More than 300 marine fish farm sites in Norway a analysis to the company ScottishAqua standard.

The according Norwegian consultant Knowledge has spent theday lasttoyear theirsurveillance wellday transforming maintenance and of techn

Yngve Askeland

Fish “ farming is

in a state of constant evolution and of course industry tools must keep up

”

known MMCD database into the module-based web application Aquacom. The improved system was

launched in August this year at Aqua-Nor and the response from new and current users has been Databases solely positive states Askeland,and managing director in Aqua Knowledge AS. Aqua Knowledge hasYngve developed hosts the component database generate a weekly report for all the sites and MMCD. The system keeps track of all technical components on Technical planning, certification, maintenance, documentation and operational farm planning is fully send this via email to responsible leaders. integrated in the Aquacom family thatthe consist of the following modules; offshore, onshore, vessels sites and helps farmers perform required inspecti ons and farm More than 300 marine fish farm sites in Norand planner.

The modules can be aspage, independent modules or put together asall one tool for have an updated of marine sites in to your co maintenance within defined tioperated mescales.

More than 300technical sites instatus Norway way and Scotland are using the offshore module and intheScotland complete value chain from hatchery to processing plant.will show all open deviations, expired certificates and o page are using the databaseoverview to document and keep track of can also autogenerate a weekly report for all sites and send thi in their day to day maintenance and surveilmoorings, net pens, generators, boats,system barges and so on.

The company A number of hatcheries and processing plants are leaders. lance of technical components. is conti nuously developing the system and plans to launch several new maintenance andfollow control-and of their Fish farming industry is in constant evolution and of course the industry tools must if machinery and More than 300 marinemaintenances fish farm sitescan in Norway arelike usin A number of hatcheries and processing set upand forScotland equipment ge modules in 2017. possible be ahead of the industry and governmental requirements Askeland says. Thebe Aquacom day to day maintenance andthe surveillance of technical components. with offshore module the company managem system is now able to cover all technical equipment regards to certification, maintenance and follow plants are already using the onshore module both sea and land facilities through the company up on both and sea and land based facilities.

Site planning project planning for technical maintenance and control of their Aqua Ole Knowledge consultants a vast experience in site and for Matre form Aqua Knowledgehave is in charge of the Aquacom system and planning has been responsible machinery and technical equipment. All kinds towards the applicati on process, when applying forthenew the latest developments.

We have been working closely with our current users of database in the of checkpoints and maintenances can be set up can contribute developing Matre says.

Number on one or priority is always toofensure the team system is user sites or when process planning for installati rebuilding sites.that The for equipment such as generators, pumps and and intuitive and the welfare same time and advanced enough to give you allon thefarms necessary takes friendly into considerati on atfish technical integrity feeding systems. Together with the offshore technical status in one single page. We now have 3 different modules to cover land using information advancedof chart soft and accurate environmental data.

The page,ware have an technical of all marine in towhich your enables company. The compa facilities, vessels and marine sites.

Weupdated also developed thestatus innovative plannersites module module, the company management will get a complete fi sh farm is modelled in 3Dshow softbased ware, including seabed data and overview page will all open expired certificates other the fish farmers to plan fish farming operations on deviations, 10 days wave forecast.

Together these 4 important ma full overview of the technical status of both sea imported A number of hatcheries and processing plants are already usingtothe On from an external source such asdatabase.

Olex or MaxSea. can alsoAquacom autogenerate a weekly report for all sites and send this by e-mail respo modules represent thesystem new improved maintenance and control of and theirsmaller machinery andinvolved technical equipment.

Large vessels in fish farm op and land facilities through the Aquacom ‘comleaders.

Several new modules will be developed the coming years Matre reveals.

We havemodule a leading position maintenances can be set for equipment like generators, pumps,to fee Theup Aquacom “Vessels” is developed e pany overview’ page.

R&D projects More than 300 close marine fish farm sites in Norway and are using the in the market today because we work with the industry and never stop to develop the system with the offshore module company management willoffshore gettraining a fullmod ove carethe of.

OilScotland change, safety equipment, pr Aqua toKnowledge parti cipates in several R&D projects that will lead to a Large and smaller vessels involved in fish meet the industry needs. day to day maintenance and ofthat technical components. both seasurveillance and land facilities the company overview page in Aqu isthrough covered in this Aquacom module. farm operations need to have a close technical safer and more sustainable fish farming industry. follow-up. The Aquacom module ‘vessels’ has been developed to ensure that all certification requirements are taken care of. Oil change, safety equipment, training programmes and certificates are some of the functions that are covered in this module.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

Aqua Knowledge.indd 41

Ole Matre

Large and smaller involved in fish farm operations needintothe hav Aquacom Planner issince the latest subsidiary At The offshore module (former MMCD) has been a valuable tool vessels for many farmers the launch A number of hatcheries and processing plants arefish already using the Onshore module for can betechnical challenging – especially exposed sites.

The module “Vessels” is to module ensure that of all checkp certific in 2011. All technical components - both andAquacom can be placed in developed the equipment. offshore maintenance and over control ofunderwater their machinery and Allonkinds wave forecast that gives an to plan of.for Oil change, safety training program and certificate 41opportunity and the users will get instant access tocan all certificates, expiration dates, technical specifications, maintenances be care set up equipment likeequipment, generators, pumps, feeding systems etc. th T criteria formodule. the operation.

The can ths that is covered in this Aquacom checklists, user manuals etc.the Theoffshore technicalmodule components can easily be moved from oneasite tooverview another with the company management willspecific get full of user technical with sites environmental conditions that is suitable for without any loss of historical data. you have access to several marine you can, on one single both sea andIf land facilities through the company overview page in Aquacom to 100x100m grid.

06/11/2017 15:39:00

Aqua Knowledge – Advertorial

Right: The Aquacom Planner v3

Aquacom ‘Planner’ is the latest subsidiary in the Aquacom family. Planning of fish farming operations can be challenging, especially on exposed sites. This module is equipped with a 7-10 day wave forecast that gives an opportunity to plan operations based on preset wind and wave criterea for the specific operation.

The user can then easily move the planned operation to a time when suitable environmental conditions are going to exist. The wave calculations are accurate to a 100 x 100 grid.

The planner module can also be set up with

2.8

statistic wave data for an actual fish farm site. This provides an opportunity to plan a complete production cycle based on statistical wave data.

This is also useful for the evaluation of future potential new sites.

The basis for the planner module is a two year Norwegian research project that aims to solve various challenges around the running of exposed fish farm locations. The project is being conducted by Aqua Knowledge in collaboration with researchers from both the Uni Research Polytec and the Norwegian fish farming company Bremnes Seashore.

You can find out more about the project by visiting the company’s Feed Conversion Ratio—Growth Trend FF website at Economic aquaknowledge.no.

2.6 2.4

EFCR

2.2

FEED CONVERSION

2

DAILY FEED

1.8

GROWTH TREND

1.6

WEIGHT CHANGE

1.4

AVG. TEMP

1.2 1 0.8 Jul ‘16

Aug ‘16

Sep ‘16

Oct ‘16

Nov ‘16

Dec ‘16

Jan ‘17

Feb ‘17

VAKI BIOMASS DAILY A REVOLUTION IN BIOMASS MEASUREMENT With a Vaki Biomass Daily frame placed permanently in each cage, fish are continually measured with pinpoint accuracy. For every site and every cage, the daily overview of average weight, size distribution, condition-factor and growth is available 24/7. Pentair AES has assembled a team of experts with diverse backgrounds in aquaculture, with decades of research and commercial industry application experience. Accurate information, real time data and reliable overview.

Trust in a team that’s here to help you—ASK US!

PentairAES.com • +1 407.886.3939

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© 2017 Pentair Aquatic Eco-Systems, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:38:36

Mar ‘17

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06/11/2017 12:09:04

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06/11/2017 12:10:01

MSD – Advertorial

Aquaculture

APP Fish farms set to embrace further technological advances in auditing

M

SD Animal Health’s aquaculture team has launched a new Aquavac Audit app to support its vaccination auditing process.

The app was developed specifically for MSD (known as Merck Animal Health in the US and Canada) customers to audit the vaccination event in a format which is easily analysed and provides greater insight on areas for improvement.

It is the first of its kind and will be used by customers and the MSD technical team to make the auditing process faster and more reliable, resulting in greater efficacy in the delivery of important vaccines.

The app allows for the assessment of external and internal accuracy, including vaccine deposition.

A question section allows for vital information relating to the vaccination event to be recorded, such as vaccine used, water temperature and post vaccination recovery.

It enables customers to complete all auditing tasks on an iPhone or iPod, removing the need for paperwork or filing.

It then automatically generates a pdf report that is emailed directly to the app user, site manager, fish health manager and MSD technical team.

The app is supported by a web portal where the pdf reports can be downloaded at a later date, as well as the raw data in an Excel spreadsheet at the user’s convenience.

Camilla MacDonald, technical manager of MSD Animal Health’s aquaculture team in Scotland, has been working closely with fish farms to provide the training required to use the new app on site.

‘The new app is excellent,’ she said.

‘I’ve already received extremely positive feedback from customers and vaccination companies over the course of the past few months.

‘It is very user friendly and we have been out in the field testing the app and showing our customers the benefits of using it in real time on fish farms.

‘As the app becomes more popular we are confident that customers

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MSD.indd 45

will save time and money as the information is automatically uploaded with reports produced at the touch of a button.

‘All data will be saved on a cloud based server which is maintained by our app partners and where site managers or fish health managers can access the information when they want.’

For further information about the app, please contact Camilla MacDonald, camilla.macdonald@merck.com or fishhealth@merck.com . FF

“canManagers access information when they want

”

Above: User friendly. Right: Reports at the touch of a button. Left: Camilla MacDonald

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06/11/2017 15:37:00

Aquaculture Europe 17 – Opening plenary

No brainer How farming fish can save the human race

A

DEFICIENCY of omega 3 in diets is linked to an increase in mental disorders, a decline in IQ and a rise in anti-social behaviour.

This was one of the conclusions drawn by Professor Michael Crawford, of Imperial College London, in the opening session of Aquaculture Europe 2017, organised by the European Aquaculture Society and held in Dubrovnik last month.

Crawford’s talk posed the question: ‘Is substitution of fishmeal and fish oil compromising our omega 3 position?’- the answer to which is ‘yes’.

He credited the success of homo sapiens as a species to the evolution of the human brain – ‘it’s the brain that makes us different from all other animals’.

The brain is composed of 60 per cent fat, a special fat dependent on the ‘marine food web’; it evolved from the sea 500 million years ago, using marine fat, or DHA, an omega 3 fatty acid. This is critically important as it is the molecule that enables us to see, to think and to do everything we do as humans, and the brain still needs it today.

Studies have shown that the chemistry of the brain over time has remained more or less the same which, said Crawford, is compelling evidence of the ‘essentiality of DHA’.

He pointed out that the first human beings lived by the sea, and that as a species we could not have evolved on the savannas, where there is little DHA in food.

DHA is irreplaceable in brain structure, yet our diets increasingly rely on land based products. We have developed the wrong kind of fat – storage fat

46

Dubrovnik Intro.indd 46

– and as we feed food like salmon, a source of DHA, a more plant based diet, DHA levels are further diminished.

Cognitive development is affected by deficiencies of omega 3, said Crawford, who painted a grim picture of the consequences of this trend, saying that brain disorders are now the greatest challenge to human health.

In 2004, brain disorders were the top cost of ill health in Europe, at 386 billion euros. In 2010, the figure had risen to 789 billion euros. In the UK, the cost of brain disorders rose from £77 billion in 2007, to £105 billion in 2010, to £113 billion in 2013.

‘We are seeing the greatest threat to the sustainability of humanity, there is no question about it and nobody is paying any attention…it’s below the radar,’ Crawford warned.

‘People don’t understand about fats – there are two different kinds of fat in the body: storage fat, which is the waistline fat, and structural fat, which is the stuff you need to build tissues in the brain.

‘You can’t build the tissues without membranes and fat provides the memBelow: View from the branes. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) as far as the brain is concerned is the conference resort. Above: most important. We’ve developed the wrong kinds of fat much to our cost.

Professor Crawford.

‘Protein is for body building, not brain building. Human milk contains the least Opposite page from top: amount of protein of any large mammal, but is rich in the fats that are required Crawford during the to finish off the development of the brain in the new born infant.’ first day plenary; EAS He showed a picture of a woman with a baby to illustrate that in homo sapipresident Bjorn Myrseth ens the child’s head is the same size as the mother’s head, whereas a baby’s presents former hand is tiny compared to its mother’s – ‘homo sapiens is about the brain’.

EAS president Sachi Other land based mammals have tiny brains compared to their body weight Kaushik with honorary life membership; EAS which, said Crawford, is because they get all the protein they need, from grass executive director and so on, to support body growth, but not enough fat to develop their brains.

Alistair Lane Marine mammals like the dolphin have a higher brain ratio.

‘There is incontrovertible evidence that the first humans were living beside the sea and exploiting the marine food web intensely.’

As further evidence of the link between eating fish and human development, he cited a study of 14,000 pregnant women, which followed the children to eight years of age. When they assessed their intellectual development they found a straight line between the proportion of fish the mother ate during pregnancy and the cognitive development of the children.

The decline in omega 3 levels in our diets, combined with exploding population growth, presented a crisis for humanity, but the Foresight 2011 government think tank, looking into the increasing pressures on the global food system, came to the wrong conclusion, suggesting we develop more intensive land based agriculture.

‘That is a mistake and what we have to do is agriculturalise the oceans, it’s the only sustainable solution,’ said Crawford.

‘If people can develop agriculture on land 10,000 years ago, for heaven’s sake when homo sapiens is threatened, surely if we’ve got no more arable land left and 71 per cent of the planet is ocean we can develop the marine resource, it’s the only answer to the sustainability of homo sapiens.’

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:35:28

No brainer

We are “seeing the

greatest threat to the sustainability of humanity, there is no question about it and nobody is paying any attention

”

He said scientists knew about the importance of DHA in the 1970s; he wrote a book called ‘What we eat today’, prompting a book reviewer in the Sunday Times to write: ‘Unless something is done we’ll become a race of morons.’

At present, man ‘is using the oceans in a Neanderthal way’, hunting and gathering, but increasing consumption of DHA can’t come from capture fisheries.

Crawford’s vision is for a new, marine, industrial revolution, with the creation of artificial reefs for ‘pasture development’, as is happening in Japan, and greater exploitation of coastlines.

The UK, for instance, has 19,000 miles of coastline when all the islands are included - ‘some of those unpopulated islands around Scotland’ – which could be put to use.

The options for this century are an increase in neurological brain disorders, a decline in intelligence and hence an increase in anti-social behaviour and a collapse of humanity. Or we can use by-products from fisheries and provide brain food that reverses the rise of mental ill health and gives our future children a chance to have the real intelligence that our genetic potential gives them.

‘We have a staggering potential to meet our food needs…we need to get it right and it’s up to you,’ he told his audience of international aquaculture delegates in the Croatian city.

Aquaculture Europe 2017, organised by the European Aquaculture Society and with the theme ‘Cooperation for growth’, ran from October 17-20.

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Dubrovnik Intro.indd 47

Professor Crawford has been the director of the Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition since 1990, and a visiting professor at Imperial College, London, since 2010. His particular interest is in the role of docosahexaenoic and arachidonic acids in brain development and function. In 1972 he co-authored the first description of the dependence of the brain on arachidonic and docosahexaenoic acids and drew attention to the evolutionary implications. FF

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06/11/2017 15:35:55

Aquaculture Europe 17 – Bluefin tuna

The way forward

Closing the cycle on a prized species – in Spain and Japan

A

WHOLE day’s session and the second plenary in Dubrovnik were devoted to taking tuna farming forward, in particular bluefin tuna, highly prized in global markets but notoriously difficult to rear commercially.

There are two methods of ‘farming’ the species, ranching wild caught stocks or producing hatchery reared fish within a closed life cycle.

Fernando de la Gandara of the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) told his audience on day two of Aquaculture Europe 2017 that Neanderthal man might not have been smart enough to catch fish but he knew that bluefin tuna entered the Mediterranean in May and June, pursued by killer whales, and at some point ended up on the beach. He went there to eat it, absorbed the DHA and the rest is history (see previous page).

Now it is captured in purse seine nets and then towed to farms for on-growing in cages – a fattening ‘semi-culture’ activity that began in the 90s.

It is fed oily fish, such as mackerel, the main aim being not to grow the fish but to fatten it in order to get the top prices, especially for the Japanese market.

Slaughter is primitive, with individual fish picked out by a diver and shot in the head in the midst of its shoal. This apparently avoids spoiling the lucrative meat.

Such is the value of the species that it was exploited to near collapse; the TAC in 2007 was set at 29,500 tonnes but in fact some 61,000 tonnes was landed.

As a result, the ICCAT (the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas) instituted a recovery plan, slashing quotas. By 2010, the recovery plan seemed to be working and now, said Gandara, the Mediterranean ‘is full of tuna’.

The ICCAT has started to increase the quota again and by 2020 it may be up to 35,000 tonnes.

But the future of the species lies in domestication, he said, and in 2001-2002 the tuna community gathered for the first symposium to agree a way forward. This concluded with a

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Tuna.indd 48

recommendation to build a large, land based facility to farm tuna.

Between 2003 and 2006 a feasibility study was carried out into bluefin tuna’s reproduction in captivity. And then, between 2008 and 2011, Gandara coordinated the Selfdott programme to establish a knowledge base for bluefin tuna farming.

Divers were used to implant captured fish with hormones to speed up maturation, and in 2009 the tuna spawned. In 2010 came the first spontaneous spawning and millions of eggs were collected.

Aurelio Ortego, also of IEO and involved in Selfdott, explained the process in more detail in a subsequent talk. A couple of broodstock were used – one of 30kg captured in 2007 that spawned between 2009 and 2012, with the subsequent loss of all the fish due to sabotage – and the other captured in 2008, and spawned between 2010 and 2013.

The broodstock were kept in 25m diameter cages in a sheltered location. They were fed five to six times a week with mackerel, sardines, and herring as bait. In 2012 a premix with vitamins was added to the bait during the maturation season.

When spawning started a tarpaulin was placed around the cage. They spawned spontaneously in June when the temperature was 20.5-21 deg C. Eggs were moved to the IEO’s facilities in Mazarron and put in cylindrical tanks of 40m3, and an upwelling water inlet was used for aeration. Artificial light was introduced, the temperature was maintained at between 21 and 27 deg C, and density was 8-10 eggs per litre.

They were fed a mixture of copepods and rotifiers and did much better with the former. The weaning tanks were similar but with no upwelling water inlets.

Ortego said a few fish were produced and the life cycle was closed in captivity for the first time in 2016, with fish spawned in captivity from eggs collected in 2011/2012.

Other initiatives, meanwhile, are ongoing in Japan, Australia, Miami in the US, Panama, Bali, Italy, Croatia, Malta and Israel, some with yellowfin tuna.

Fernando de la Gandara said: ‘We are able to obtain farming activity from the cages but there are important problems.’

The natural spawning period is too short, at one and a half months, for instance. And in this short period if there is very bad weather, they don’t manage to get any eggs at all because they are produced outside the cage. Another problem is that predators’ eggs are sometimes mixed up with tuna eggs.

To avoid these issues, the Spanish government was persuaded to invest in a land based facility at Mazarron. This cost six million euros to build, and has four tanks, two for broodstock and two for juveniles.

It has two wells to extract water, a desalination plant, and drum filters within the recirculation system plant. There are two different systems to provide two different temperatures. And there are ultraviolet lamps at the bottom of the tanks to control photoperiods.

The facility, officially opened in 2015, has had problems with water quality, leading to high mortality with the small fish. But they have now

Above: There are initiatives in progress around the world to farm bluefin tuna commercially

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The way forward

solved the problem, said Gandara.

The objective of the infrastructure is to provide the scientific community, both national and international, with open access.

‘The main objective is to continue the sustainable production of bluefin tuna by means of full cycle aquaculture independently of capture, and increase the knowledge of bluefina tuna biology, for better fisheries management, not just for aquaculture,’ said Gandara.

He invited research teams from other countries to use the Mazarron plant, which they are trying to get the Spanish government to declare as ‘a unique singular scientific and aqua technological structure’ to attract more funding.

In Japan, there are also two methods of ‘farming’ tuna, ranching wild caught stocks or producing hatchery reared fish, said Manabu Seoka, discussing Pacific bluefin tuna.

The vast majority of tuna are ranched – 12,560 tonnes last year compared to 849 tonnes of hatchery raised tuna.

But, said Seoka, this will have to change because Japanese regulations now stipulate that any growth in the number of cages has to come from hatchery production, not wild caught fish – farmers who want to produce more fish must use hatchery fish.

Progress has been made, with more than 50 per cent of the total number of fish stocked for farming since 2012 originating from hatchery produced juveniles.

The market for bluefin is driven by the Japanese and global demand for sushi and sashimi, with an increasing number of Japanese restaurants around the world.

Production has increased globally from 28,000 to 51,000 tonnes, partly due to an increase in quotas, but also because of farming.

Pacific bluefin tuna farming takes place in 30 out of 47 prefectures in Japan, with a total production of 13,412 tonnes in 2016.

There are 95 enterprises operating 175 sites, in 1,657 cages. The two main production areas are Nagasaki and Kagoshima, with 41 enterprises in Nagasaki and six in Kagoshima. Kagoshima has higher average production, at 70kg, than Nagasaki, at 55kg, with just two big companies, compared to Nagasaki’s many, small family owned businesses.

Although the life cycle for Pacific bluefin tuna was closed in a land based facility in 2014 – with Seoka instrumental in achieving the breakthrough – many production problems must be overcome before the species is reared from hatcheries at a commercial scale.

The obstacles include low survival at the larval stage, due to ‘floating and sinking death’; low survival of juveniles due to cannibalism; and low survival in young fish, of around two years old, because of collisions.

Adding oil to the water for controlled periods can ease larval mortalities, formulated feeds can address cannibalism, and larger cages

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and night-lighting illumination can reduce collisions.

A more stable supply of eggs for the hatchery and the establishment of formulated feeds for larval production and on-growing will advance bluefin tuna farming, said Seoka. FF

“

The main objective is to increase the knowledge for better fisheries management, not just for aquaculture

”

Strength in numbers for producers

AQUACULTURE producers in Central and Eastern Europe should become more involved in their producer organisations but, apart from about four countries in the region, participation in such bodies is very weak.

Laszlo Varadi of the Hungarian Aquaculture and Fisheries Inter-Branch Organisation, said it was necessary to understand the history of this part of Europe, where the legacy of a centrally planned economy still tended to dominate the mindset.

‘It is only since the early 90s that we have moved to a market economy and the transition has been a very long period,’ he said. Extra effort is required from producer organisations.

Strong producers’ associations are needed to represent the sector efficiently, but while these organisations were getting more representative in EU countries, there were few signs of change in non-EU nations.

Part of these associations’ role was to help in the preparation of rules and regulations, to disseminate information to members, and to assist in marketing strategies – ‘but people here still don’t believe we can affect market strategies’.

Producer associations should be more active not just in national but in international arenas, where there was common ground, particularly in relation to freshwater aquaculture, which is predominant in the region.

Varadi said there were existing aquaculture networks – including FEAP, EATiP, and NACEE (Network of Aquaculture Centres in Central and Eastern Europe) – that smaller producer organisations could make use of. There was good support from the EU but in Varadi’s opinion, farmers should not expect external help and ‘where support is limited the producers may achieve more than where it is available’.

‘Over supporting is sometimes against innovation – people write nice proposals [for funding] instead of focusing on innovation!’

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Aquaculture Europe 17 – Shellfish

Forum for the future Native oysters on the agenda as new group is formed

BY JANET H BROWN

A

VISIT to the historic oyster growing region of Mali Ston Bay was the pre-conference excursion at the Aquaculture Europe 2017 meeting in Dubrovnik and, with conference chairman Ivan Katavić highlighting the native oyster production of Croatia at the opening ceremony later the same day, we could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that this year’s event was centred on native oysters. That was certainly my reason for being there.

The European Aquaculture Society (EAS) has a system for creating and facilitating thematic groups to focus on a special area of interest, taking advantage of the wide membership and geographic reach of the society.

The latest of these is the Native Oyster Thematic Group, which has been under discussion for some time. I think I first heard it mooted at a Euroshell meeting in Bordeaux some years ago but it was a more definite shape on the horizon at the EAS meeting in Edinburgh last year.

Alistair Lane, executive director of EAS, who has been instrumental in setting up the group, said it was more likely to finally achieve lift-off at

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Below: Discussion in progress at the workshop. Top: Rosa and Bernadette. Right: Tony Legg presents Ortak4 to Ana Bratoš Cetinić for trials at Mali Ston, overlooked by Lorenzo Gennari. Opposite top: Anti sea bream growing method for young oysters. Opposite right: Ana Gavrilović explains the preferred settlement mesh on the left while settled oysters can be seen on mesh on the right.

Dubrovnik because he had been approached, during initial planning for the conference,

by Vedran Kunica of the Mali Ston growers association (see box) for help with their oyster problems.

So it became merely a question of Lane persuading someone to shoulder the responsibility, a job nobly undertaken jointly by Gercende Courtois de Viçose, based at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Rosa Fernández whose work with Cetmar in knowledge transfer may uniquely qualify her for this job.

After an initial call for interest, a few conference calls were set up to arrange the first actual meeting of the group in Dubrovnik. I am not sure how many people realised how appropriate this location was for a discussion of restoration of oysters.

The potential downside to the timing was the scheduled workshop on restoration of oysters organised by the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) with the Alfred Wegener Institute in Berlin at the beginning of November, but the positive view is that it means work to restore native oysters, both for commercial production and as restored habitat, is gaining a real head of steam.

So, the first meeting of the newly formed thematic group convened on the first day of

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Forum for the future

current state of oyster production in Northern Europe from Trish Daly, and the Mediterranean by Kruno Bonaçić.

After lunch it was the turn of Tony Legg to talk about ongrowing, this time unveiling the Ortac 4 with new improved anti-fouling devices which will be trialled in Mali Ston.

The final session was on restoration, with a presentation from Bernadette Pogoda, who talked about ongoing initiatives in Europe, and Pauline Kamermans, who discussed more specific experience in the Netherlands, where an actual mixed reef is already established.

While the supply of spat is clearly the critical issue, there are more difficult decisions to be made since one of the big challenges remains the disease bonamia, which has been part of the reason for decline in the native oyster.

While avoiding introducing bonamia into uninfected areas is very important and has to be enforced by control of movement, one impor-

the conference. There were three sessions: supply of juveniles; ongrowing technologies and challenges; and restoration.

There were presentations, discussion and the aim was to produce a set of priorities for taking the endeavour forward. At times during the day this seemed a very distant possibility, but with suggestions already garnered from answers to questionnaires sent out to participants signed up to the group ahead of the meeting, and some exemplary note taking and editing from Gercende, there was a summary produced and votes taken on prioritisation.

The overwhelming need appeared to be demand for spat. For commercial hatcheries this is not an easy market since if oysters do get well established, successful recruitment could make the hatchery unviable in the long term.

(But this might still be a long way off.)

It is still a considerable risk for a hatchery in what may be an uncertain market and what is probably needed, in the view of Alistair Lane, is some sort of public private partnership.

Without such assistance North American shellfish restoration would not have got underway, and provision of state/university funded hatcheries has fuelled both restoration and aquaculture development very successfully in states such as Virginia. It could well be what is needed for a breakthrough in Europe.

The oyster day in Dubrovnik was very instructive and well set up, so that for each topic there was essentially a presentation from a mainly research viewpoint and a second from a more commercial/practical viewpoint, with time for discussion to allow conclusions to be drawn.

The presentations included Luz Pérez-Parallé on hatchery production of flat oysters; the

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06/11/2017 15:31:01

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Forum for the future tant question remains: ‘Do we introduce bonamia resistant stock into areas where oysters are no longer found, or bonamia free oysters?’

Genetics will be increasingly important and practical answers need to be found to enable young spat to be put out into their final growing position as early as possible as this remains a real bottleneck.

“

Provision of state/ university funded hatcheries could well be what is needed for a breakthrough in Europe

”

Opposite page: Snack time at 10am!

The big hope is that in having a specific forum through EAS to share knowledge and ideas, there may be a real opportunity to see progress with native oysters so that they can once again provide both feast and habitat for the future. FF

Production hit by war and sea bream WHILE native oysters have been a feature of Mali Ston for a long time, the actual farming of them using suspended ropes became established some 50 to 60 years ago.

They are essentially growing oysters in the traditional way of the Mediterranean, using spat collectors and then attaching the collected spat on to lines in pairs, or more recently in threes as they do in Mediterranean France.

The spat collectors are different types of plastic but the best they find are old mussel lines which they suspend in the water.

There are usually two spawnings a year and they put the first collectors out in May but it seems likely that there are some changes in the pattern of spawnings and the growers may well be missing the best times, according to Kruno Bonaçić recently returned to work as a scientist in the University of Dubrovnik.

If they use the plates or couppelles they often settle too thickly on the undersides and then it is hard to separate the oysters.

It takes 1.5-2 years after this settlement to grow to market size. In the past, the oysters were grown on wood which was also used for collecting spat.

The declared production is about 1.5 million oysters which works out at roughly 150 tonnes pa but it may

well be more and a figure double this was suggested to me. Production, however, was adversely affected by the Croatian war in the 90s.

This has not been the only problem; sea bream farm escapes have the unhelpful predilection for eating young oysters (less than a year old). Farming of sea bream is no longer allowed in the area but the fish remain.

Researchers have been trialling growing the young oysters in plastic boxes to provide protection in the early stages.

Also, mussels imported into the area for culture have also introduced a lot of biofouling species which may become an increasing problem in time.

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06/11/2017 15:32:20

Aquaculture Europe 17 – Health control

Gill disease grows complex

New approach is needed for holistic management

AT a health control seminar, Professor Barbara Nowak from the University of Tasmania, spoke about the emergence of amoebic gill disease (AGD) in European aquaculture.

The disease was first detected in coho salmon in Washington state around 1985, and around the same time it was found in Tasmania, during the first year of production of farmed Atlantic salmon. It had yet to be seen elsewhere, however.

This was the situation when Nowak went to Tasmania in 1991, researching AGD. At every conference, people asked why she bothered to work on such an obscure disease that nobody else was getting. Obviously, the situation has since changed.

‘In the 2013 EAS meeting there was one poster on AGD and no oral presentations; in 2015 there were nine talks and four posters; and this year there were eight talks and five posters – something is happening,’ she said.

Clinical AGD – caused by the pathogen Neoparamoeba perurans, a free living marine amoeba- has been observed in cultured fish in 14 countries across six continents. It currently affects all countries producing Atlantic salmon but is also detected in other species such as cleaner fish and sea bream and sea bass.

The treatment initially developed in Tasmania was freshwater bathing, where fish were put for four hours in oxygenated water. Freshwater baths were towed to each site and the fish pumped in, a time consuming and labour intensive procedure.

Now wellboats are used to carry out freshwater treatments. Hydrogen peroxide is also used, usually in areas where freshwater is not available.

Freshwater treatment shows the amoeba dropping significantly in the first few days but, said Nowak, in the worst case scenario, in summer when there are quite high temperatures, 10 days after treatment the numbers go back to where they were before.

Novel management options are being developed and trialled – for instance, Frode Oppedal [of Norway’s Institute of Marine Research] found that the snorkel cage, which had been created to counter sea lice, also had some potential in treating AGD. But the best hope, according to Nowak, is a genetic solution. Tasmania has had a traditional breeding programme since 2006 and this has resulted in a reduction in freshwater treatments. Genetic selection will provide further

hope for managing AGD, she said.

The emergence of AGD appeared to coincide with high sea surface temperature and possibly with intensification of mariculture. The first recorded outbreak of AGD in Europe – in 2006, in Scotland and Norway- was at a time when temperatures were unusually high.

The amoeba don’t need fish to reproduce; and even low numbers of amoeba can cause AGD. They are detected in the sediment on farms; and biofouling is a factor, so there is concern that net cleaning may release amoeba; and they are detected in wild fish, including cleaner fish, which are quite susceptible and therefore could be a significant reservoir of AGD. In Norway in 2016, there were fewer treatments for AGD; in Scotland, 90 per cent of farms used hydrogen peroxide and 10 per cent used freshwater but there was an increasing incidence of AGD and increasing complexity. In Ireland, there was a reduction in treatments, and also a reduction in mortalities.

In contrast to the situation in Tasmania, AGD in Europe is one of many gill conditions affecting Atlantic salmon farmed in sea cages. Complex Gill Disease, for example, affects northern Europe – Norway, Scotland and Ireland – but not Tasmania.

It is multi-factorial with unclear pathogens and risk factors. Climate change, bringing higher water temperatures, is thought to be a contributing factor. It can occur in other species – cleaner fish for example – but Atlantic salmon are mainly affected.

This means that a new approach is needed for holistic management of gill health in farmed Atlantic salmon, Nowak said. FF

Best bags for transporting freshwater ZSOLT Volent of Sintef Ocean described an experiment on various types of tarpaulin bags used for safekeeping reverse osmosis. Freshwater is increasingly needed to treat for AGD and sea lice.

To reduce the transport costs of freshwater and treatment in wellboats, Sintef Ocean is developing a system for producing freshwater with reverse osmosis on site, safekeeping the freshwater, and treating salmon with the freshwater.

The focus of the experiment presented by Volent was flexible cages, and the models were tested in the Sintef flume tank at Hirtshalls. The use of flexible bags involves many challenges, such as contamination by saltwater, preservation of water quality, environmental forces on the mooring and bag due to currents and waves, and density difference between the surrounding saltwater and freshwater inside the bag. The shapes, all scaled 1:25,

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EAS Reports.indd 54

were a sphere, a zeppelin (called the ‘hotdog’ by Volent), and an ellipsoid and all models were made of watertight parachute fabrics. The flume tank uses freshwater so to imitate density differences a mixture of water and methylated spirits was used inside the tarpaulin.

The mooring for the sphere and ‘hotdog’ was sway mooring with an underwater buoy for the sphere, and a chain at the bottom for the hotdog.

A frame mooring was used for the ellipsoid shape.

When tested in currents and waves and the drag force measured, the sphere moved more and therefore this is not the ideal shape. The hotdog and ellipsoid had similar movement but with the hotdog the drag forces increased dramatically in strong currents so this instability has to be solved.

The ellipsoid model moved more smoothly both in currents and waves so this is the best model.

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Aquaculture Europe 17 – Health control

Why movement of skirts matters SAMANTHA Bui of the Institute of Marine Research in Norway discussed sea lice prevention strategies.

The government limit in Norway is 0.5 adult female lice per fish and farmers have to delouse if they exceed this. This is costly and has to be carried out regularly throughout the year, creating a resistance to chemical treatments in sea lice. So the focus now is on non-chemical methods and on prevention.

Sea lice are attracted to light, said Bui. In daylight, salmon are often near the surface so there are lots of prevention methods to try to lure the salmon deeper into the sea cage.

These methods include lights inside the pens, feeding at deeper levels, and using lice shields or skirts. She described a trial conducted at a commercial site in south west Norway with four cages, each with different parameters.

A – control with just cleaner fish B – cleaner fish and functional feed C – cleaner fish, functional feed and submerged lights D – all the above plus lice skirt The test has run from November 2016 until now, representing a whole production cycle. They sampled 20 fish from every cage every three to four weeks and measured them against the Salmon Welfare Index Model (SWIM).

SWIM indicators include emaciation, deformities, fin damage, eye status and skin condition.

The results showed similarities between A and

B, but C showed more fluctuation and D showed even more fluctuation, and the latter two also had seasonal differences, which might be related to fish size or the environment.

The B group had more lice infestations than A, the C group had a similar amount but seemed to be more efficient in the July to August period, but D was obviously working better – although there were not many differences until later in the year.

There were no strong conclusions, Bui said, perhaps because there are so many factors that can influence lice attachment, including the behaviour of the salmon, the environment, and cleaner fish efficiency – which is also affected by the environment. The trial is still ongoing.

Andreas Myskja Lien, of Sintef Ocean, took up the subject of lice skirts too, looking at what happens in different currents and waves.

Physical barriers such as skirts are one of the main anti-lice strategies in Norway and many farmers have been using these for years, with

Rearing wrasse faster THOMAS Cavrois, a PhD student at Stirling’s Institute of Aquaculture, talked about the growth performance of ballan wrasse at different temperatures and with different diets.

Some 300,000 wrasse were farmed in Scotland in 2016, in two main hatcheries – Machrihanish and Otter Ferry – but the demand is increasing constantly, as these fish are one of the best solutions at the moment for sea lice.

But there are no standardised protocols for rearing ballan wrasse. Comparing the production of wrasse with lumpsuckers, Cavrois said there is an 18-month difference in the time it takes to grow the two species, with wrasse needing two years until deployment in sea pens.

The long growth time for wrasse increases logistic problems and the likelihood of disease. And the longer it takes to rear a species, the more expensive it is. Scientists, therefore, are looking for ways to shorten the life cycle.

Very few studies have been done on optimal temperatures but temperature does affect growth, with 10-16 deg C being the optimal window.

Cavrois said his study also looked at diets, but that was a secondary consideration.

He and his team tested three systems – at 10, 13 and 16 deg C. And they fed the wrasse two different commercial diets – with different sinking velocities, and similar ingredients.

The fish grew fastest at 16 deg C, as expected – ‘there were considerable differences compared to 10 and even 13 degrees,’ said Cavrois - and these fish were also the biggest.

There were no differences in mortality, so the higher temperature did not encourage more bugs.

The results of the different diets showed no significant differences in the FCR. At higher temperatures the fish were feeding more and the lipid con-

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EAS Reports.indd 55

good results. There are several skirts on the market (from suppliers such as Botnagaard and Salgard anf Havbruk).

He and his team tested two common cage designs in currents and waves, at the Hirtshals North Sea Centre flume tank, one cylindrical and the other conical. They made skirts from two different types of materials, one impervious and one pervious, and in two different depths – 5m and 10m.

The scale of the models was 1:17. The cylindrical cage was 20m deep while the conical one was 34m deep. They calculated the drag force using underwater cameras.

The results showed that the cylindrical cage with impervious skirt at 10m deep deformed in high currents. As the current increased, the skirt lifted more and more. There was a danger that it could eventually be blown away by the wind.

There was not much difference between the two materials used. And there was no big difference in the drag force between the skirts. But the conical model had a lower drag force than the cylindrical model and was able to move more in the water with the currents.

He concluded that all configurations of skirts increase the total drag force on the cage, and that there were only minor differences in drag forces between variations in skirts.

Skirts increase the drag forces of cylindrical and conical nets similarly, and skirt movement in waves is greatest at the water surface, which can result in the skirt crawling upwards.

tent of the fish was higher. The liver analysis showed the livers were twice as big in the 10 deg C fish as in the 16 deg C. Conclusions drawn so far, said Cavrois, are that in terms of growth performance, 16 deg C is a safe temperature in which to farm ballan wrasse. The next step is to dig deeper into the liver histology and study the effects of temperature on gut microbiota.

‘We want to optimise feeding and diet formulation,’ he said. ‘This fish has specific needs that we don’t yet understand.’

By farming the fish at 16 deg C constantly they can reduce the duration of the production cycle of ballan wrasse in the hatchery and that is significant from the farmers’ point of view.

There were very few deformities among the fish, Cavrois said in response to a question. And asked about the survivability of wrasse in the sea phase, he said they need to be more robust and had to be acclimatised before transfer to sea pens.

Above: Thomas Cavrois at a conference last year

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06/11/2017 15:28:17

Research seminar – Pharmaq

BY CHRIS MITCHELL

Quest for the Holy Grail Pursuit of sea lice vaccine hot topic at Pharmaq’s annual get together

I

T WAS on day two of Pharmaqademy 2017, held in Inverness last month, that Ben North updated delegates on some changes that have been implemented at Fordingbridge, the home of Pharmaq in the UK. Ben himself has moved from managing operations at Pharmaq here to the post of director of global R&D activities, a change which means that he now spends almost as much time in Oslo as in Hampshire.

Meanwhile, operational responsibility of the UK business now rests with Anne Day, who attended the Inverness conference for the first time in many years. Otherwise it is very much business as usual at Pharmaq, although, as Ben informed delegates, with the benefits of new ownership under Zoetis beginning to gain traction. This has been particularly evident in access to global market opportunities, which hitherto have been quite a challenge for a company with 220 employees.

The Monday sessions kicked off with the presentation of a new service from Pharmaq’s diagnostic company Pharmaq analytiq.

SmoltVision, which helps salmon producers determine when their smolts are ready to be transferred to sea, was presented by Elise Hjelle, who is managing the process for the company.

She mentioned that the smolt transfer decision is one that has traditionally been based upon an analysis of ATPase enzyme levels, but

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recently Pharmaq Analytiq has developed a real-time PCR method for measuring readiness for transfer, the results of which can be conveyed to producers within 24 hours of receiving the samples. The service has already been widely adopted by farmers in Norway, Canada, Chile, the Faroes and Iceland and the company is now launching the system in Scotland and Ireland.

Pharmaq Analytiq is also looking to adapt the technology so it can be used on rainbow trout destined for rearing in seawater. Because rainbow trout do not go through the smoltification process per se, assessing when they are capable of being transferred to seawater remains a challenge and is currently based on size (usually around 100 grams).

However, according to Elise, and to trout producers present at Pharmaqademy, this is by no means failsafe, making the introduction of a PCR analysis of seawater readiness, which should be ready within two years, potentially very useful.

Delegates with an interest in sea lice mitigation were treated to two presentations, one detailing developments around vaccine research and the other regarding deltamethrin, the active component in Pharmaq’s licensed therapeutant, AMX. The current lice vaccine research project at Pharmaq commenced in 2014 and while showing some very promising results, specifically with respect to three candidate proteins, Bjørn Brudeseth was under no illusions about the long-term nature of the hunt for this Holy Grail and that it would be some time before field trials could commence.

A quicker return on new research in the realm of sea lice may well come from Armin Sturm, at Stirling’s Institute of Aquaculture, who outlined the results of a project, supported by Pharmaq, that is trying to determine what makes some sea lice resistant to deltamethrin.

As he outlined in his talk, there are still huge gaps to be filled concerning the genetic basis for resistance to most types of sea louse medication – knowledge that could, in the long run, lead to better sea lice management strategies as well as optimising the use of currently available lice treatments.

Louise von Gersdorff Jorgensen, from Copenhagen University, supported Bjørn’s view that the pursuit of a vaccine against parasites, while challenging, is certainly an enterprise worth pursuing. She presented her research into the immunodynamics of I. multifilis infestation using, zebrafish as a model. It was a presentation that included some fascinating video sequences showing patterns of infestation as well as the response from the host.

Bjørn also spoke about Pharmaq’s research activities involving Moritella viscosa – the bacterial infection best known for causing winter ulcer in salmon and trout at times when water temperatures dip below 10 deg C. While Pharmaq already has several licensed vaccines with an M. viscosa component, it is characterising isolates from a pool of

Left: The customary Pharmaqademy cake.

Above: Delegates relax Pharmaq style with curling

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Quest for the Holy Grail

samples collected from salmon, trout and, under the auspices of a SAIC project, lumpfish with a view to identify possible vaccine candidates.

Continuing the bacteriological theme, Mohamed Shaalan from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna outlined how nanoparticles of silver – delivered to fish either by intraperitoneal injection or bath methods – were proving to be extremely effective in preventing furunculosis in rainbow trout infected with A. salmonicida. Not only could he demonstrate efficacy but he also suggested that it could be an economically viable alternative to antibiotics.

Responsibilities The importance of replacing antibiotics with preventative or alternative therapies was brought into sharp and poignant focus by Willie Malcolm, from Health Protection Scotland, who offered a sobering insight into the increasing incidence of antibiotic resistance in human medicine.

He acknowledged that while aquaculture in the northern hemisphere has an impressive track record in substituting antimicrobial use with vaccination, everyone involved in human and animal medicine has a responsibility to conserve what he described as ‘a precious resource’ for interventions where their role is life-saving.

Life-saving therapies are often crucial to farming operations, but Charlie Mason from the Humane Slaughter Association (HAS) reminded the audience that ending the life of farm animals in a humane and stressfree way remains an integral part of both agriculture and aquaculture today. He spoke with compassion and knowledge, punctuated with moments of light-heartedness, on an important subject that many people

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Pharmaq.indd 57

There are still huge gaps to be “ filled concerning the genetic basis for resistance to most types of sea louse medication

”

might find difficult to address.

The humane slaughter of aquaculture species features high on the HAS agenda with the organisation having just been awarded what Charlie described as ‘a six figure sum’ for research into this important area.

He invited delegates to get involved or even become committed – the difference between involvement and commitment being, he explained, best illustrated using bacon and eggs, where the chicken is involved but the pig is committed! FF Chris Mitchell is Pharmaq’s national sales manager.

57

06/11/2017 16:43:11

Skretting – Advertorial

Skretting UK/Fish Farmer/Clean/Draft

CLEAN Key for cleaner fish success Cleaner fish are an increasingly important part of the industry’s integrated approach to managing sea lice and UK lumpfish (Cyclopterus lumpus) hatchery capacity has increased significantly over the past few years to satisfy the growing demand.

NEW

In parallel with the increased production and use of cleaner fish there has been a dedicated focus in Skretting on further developing feeds specifically for lumpfish to support both hatchery production efficiency as well as their cleaning efficacy once they have been deployed at sea.

A CLEAN start

Now available to Lumpfish producers in the UK is VITALIS Clean, CLEAN Start and CLEAN Assist Skretting’s latest innovative feeding programme for lumpfish that provides specific and advanced nutrition to broodstock, larvae and juveniles.

The key for cleaner fish success

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High levels of phospholipids and the correct EHA/DPA ratios essential for larval and juvenile development.

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A proprietary algal blend which enhances digestion and pigmentation.

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Carbohydrates for optimal binding and energy.

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Additional functional ingredients to improved digestibility, mucus production and water quality.

The CLEAN programme for hatcheries includes three product ranges: VITALIS Clean - a formulated diet for lumpfish broodstock based on essential requirements that provides advanced broodstock nutrition and biosecurity for egg and larval production.

CLEAN Start – a diet designed to co-feed and wean lumpfish larvae during the larval rearing phases and fed to fish up to 1g.

CLEAN Assist – a diet developed for lumpfish juveniles delivering best growth and conditioning for transfer to sea.

The CLEAN range is made with highly digestible ingredients and the formula is based on a high LEANER fish are an increasingly important part of theofindustry’s inclusion natural marine protein components, highly unsaturated integrated approach to managing sea lice. UK lumpfish (Cyclopter-fatty acids (HUFA’s), marine us lumpus) hatchery capacity has increased phospholipids, significantly over thealgae, astaxanthin, vitamins and minerals to provide a complete nutritional past few years to satisfy the growing demand. profile for early life stages of lumpfish.

In parallel with the increased production and use of cleaner fish there has been a dedicated focus at Skretting on furtherRaw developing feeds materials with purpose specifically for lumpfish to support both hatchery production efficiency Experience has shown as well as their cleaning efficacy once they have been deployed at sea.us that cleaner fish will only feed with an appropriate taste and texture and Now available to lumpfish producers in the UK iseat Vitalis Clean, Clean our knowledge of the Above: specific nutritional Juveniles.

Right: Start and Clean Assist – Skretting’s latest innovative feeding programme requirements of marine fish has driven the Skretting’s new CLEAN for lumpfish that provides specific and advanced nutrition toabroodinclusion of variety of highhatchery quality raw materials range for stock, larvae and juveniles. for functional purposes in the CLEAN range. lumpfish.

CLEAN formulations ingredients:

the following Nutrition The Clean range is made with highly digestible ingredients and the formula is based on a high inclusion of natural marine proteinand compo Squid Krill meal to ensure high palatability. nents, highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFAs), phospholipids, marine

58

Skretting PED.indd 58

utilise

Figure 1. Skretting’s new CLEAN hatchery range forwww.fishfarmer-magazine.com lumpfish.

06/11/2017 15:17:56

A Clean start algae, astaxanthin, vitamins and minerals to provide a complete nutritional profile for early life stages of lumpfish.

Raw materials with purpose Experience has shown us that cleaner fish will only eat feed with an appropriate taste and texture and our knowledge of the specific nutritional requirements of marine fish has driven the inclusion of a variety of high quality raw materials for functional purposes in the Clean range. Clean formulations utilise the following ingredients: • Squid and krill meal to ensure high palatability; • High levels of phospholipids and the correct EHA/DPA ratios essential for larval and juvenile development; • A proprietary algal blend which enhances digestion and pigmentation; • Carbohydrates for optimal binding and energy; • Additional functional ingredients to improve digestibility, mucus production and water quality.

help to shield skin, gut and gills. They also support other immune functions while limiting oxidative stress to maintain the balance between fish, microbes and environment, thus enabling them to reach their lice eating potential.

Cleaner hatchery systems The production process for our Clean diets is based on low temperature micro extrusion and an innovative algal blend which enables the creation of clean, homogeneous and dust-free micro particles. The use of this technology ensures that fewer nutrients are lost prior to ingestion and assists in maintaining high water quality and reducing the pressure on mechanical filters in RAS production systems.

Skretting employs an industry unique quality control system called ‘image analysis’ which ensures that finished seeds are consistent in particle size and shape and are dust free.

The Clean hatchery range in the UK will be complemented at the end of the year with the introduction of the new in-cage feed range which includes: Clean Transfer – a transitional feed used during the first six weeks of exposure to ensure that the lumpfish prosper during this stressful period.

Clean Lumpfish – a feed designed to maintain robust and keen lice eaters for the rest of the sea phase.

For further information about Skretting’s cleaner fish feeds contact Jamie Johnston, hatchery technical sales advisor on 07867 502867 or email him at Jamie.johnston@skretting.com FF

The formula is based on a high “ inclusion of natural marine protein components ”

The Clean programme for hatcheries includes three product ranges: Vitalis Clean – a formulated diet for lumpfish broodstock based on essential requirements that provides advanced broodstock nutrition and biosecurity for egg and larval production.

Clean Start – a diet designed to co-feed and wean lumpfish larvae during the larval rearing phases and fed to fish up to 1g.

Clean Assist – a diet developed for lumpfish juveniles delivering best growth and conditioning for transfer to sea.

Supporting health and welfare Lumpfish cleaning efficacy has been directly linked to their health status and handling.

Environmental stress and infectious agents are significant challenges to their immune system.

The Clean range contains specific natural functional ingredients that promote improved mucus production and quality, which together

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

Skretting PED.indd 59

Above: Eggs and larvae

59

06/11/2017 15:18:20

Drawing Laura Hidalgo Lรณpez

CLEAN

NEW

CLEAN Start & CLEAN Assist Key for cleanerfish success

CLEAN Start is an innovative start-feeding programme for lumpfish larvae while CLEAN Assist has been developed for lumpfish juveniles for pre-growing and is the ideal diet for fish conditioning for transfer. CLEAN Start and CLEAN Assist are based on an innovative algal blend and are produced with a sophisticated technological process based on micro and low temperature extrusion.

CLEAN Start and CLEAN Assist contain natural functional ingredients that improve mucus production & quality, digestion, stabilising gut pH and support the optimal well-being of lumpfish larvae and juveniles.

For more information, please contact your local feed consultant.

www.skretting.co.uk

Untitled-2 60

06/11/2017 12:16:49

Processing News

Saucy Fish owners sold for £80 million

Saucy lands Tesco frozen deal

The Icelandic Group has agreed the sale for cash of its Grimsby based subsidiary Icelandic Seachill to the Hilton Food Group, a specialist international meat packing business, in a deal worth £80.8 million

FINAL completion is expected this month.

Icelandic said the Seachill sale process, announced by its main board in April this year, received significant interest from

million, but the actual cash figure is £80.8 million and it represents the largest sale of a UK based seafood business for many years.

Seachill, makers of the highly successful Saucy Fish Co range, will now become a standalone division of Hilton following completion, with the existing Seachill multiple parties on a management team global basis. But Hilton remaining in place. emerged as the likely Simon Smith, the successful bidder at the current Seachill CEO, end of July. will continue to lead Iceandic said the the business as a divienterprise value of sional head of Hilton. the deal is worth £84 Seachill is a major

BigFish brand turns to breaded salmon GRIMSBY’S BigFish Brand has unveiled six new, convenient breaded salmon products. Made with premium salmon fillet and coated in golden crumbs, the range offers salmon in both bites and goujons with plain and two flavoured breadcrumbs: Lemon & Pepper and Chilli & Lime.

The range is aimed squarely at boosting the role of seafood in the popular and fast growing breaded product market.

Louise Coulbeck, joint founder and director of JCS Fish, the family firm which produces BigFish Brand, said: ‘These new bites and goujons per-

Above: Xxxx

fectly answer a clear consumer need.

Seafood is currently playing catch-up to chicken, which has seen substantial growth in coated bite-size, fillet

supplier of chilled and frozen natural white fish and salmon and added value products within the coated and ready-to-eat fish sectors.

Hilton’s business was established in 1994 to set up and operate a beef and lamb central meat packing facility in Huntingdon. It has grown rapidly and now has six factories, and its products are sold in supermarkets across 14 European countries.

Hilton is a publicly traded company listed on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange.

Herdís Dröfn Fjeldsted, chair of the board of Icelandic Group and CEO of the Icelandic Enterprise Investment Fund (EIF), said: ‘This agreement to sell the business comes after the completion of a very successful re-organisation of our UK businesses under the current management team into a single business known as Seachill, which has given a scale that has enabled the growth of stronger and more

Transaction welcomed

“

There is a very strong strategic fit between the businesses

”

successful strategic relationships with customers and suppliers.

‘It is clear that Hilton is very well positioned to deliver further success for the business.’

Simon Smith added: ‘There is a very strong strategic fit between the businesses, and I believe the transaction will be welcomed by all stakeholders.

‘Under the ownership of Hilton we will be able to invest further in our facilities and improve our organisational capability to serve our customers better.

‘This is great news for the ongoing success of the business.’

Young’s champions seafood with product launch YOUNG’S Seafood kicked off Seafood Week last month with the launch of five new products under its successful Gastro brand.

The Gastro range is now worth more than £60 million a year to the company and was introduced some years ago with the aim of bringing restaurant quality fish into the supermarket.

It may also become part of Young’s recently announced debut into the United States retail market.

The new products will be available in major UK retailers from this month and consist of three Gastro Fish Bakes and two Gastro ‘Melting Middle’ Fishcakes.

Young’s Seafood marketing director

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

Processing News.indd 61

Yvonne Adam said: ‘As the UK’s leading fish and seafood manufacturer, our mission is to inspire people to love fish.

‘These new additions to our Gastro brand, which is the UK’s number one premium frozen fish brand, provide more great ways to enjoy restaurant quality fish straight from the freezer.

‘As an island nation, eating fish and seafood is part of our tradition and national identity

yet, incredibly, we consume a lot more meat than fish per person every year.

‘We know it’s good for us; we like it and in fact we choose it a lot in restaurants, and we know there are so many effortless ways to enjoy it.’

Above: Cook from frozen fishcakes

THE Saucy Fish Co has secured a major listing with Tesco UK and Ireland for its frozen range. This is the second important retail coup for the Grimsby based business following a similar launch into Sainsbury’s earlier this year.

But this latest deal with Britain’s largest supermarket chain will come as little surprise to industry observers, as Seachill, Saucy Fish’s parent company, and the Hilton Food Group, are both key suppliers to Tesco in their respective meat and fish products.

Since launching the range with Sainsbury’s in February this year, 77 per cent of the Saucy Fish Co’s spend has been incremental to Sainsbury’s frozen fish category as a whole, with the brand introducing younger, more affluent customers to frozen fish – something the company plans to replicate in Tesco’s freezer aisle.

Available across 481 stores, the Tesco listing will be supported by a multi-channel marketing campaign.

Tesco did list the brand’s chilled range in 2010 and 2013, only to mysteriously drop it and then bring it back again.

The Saucy Fish Co is also expanding its fishcake range with a Thai Spiced product.

61 61

06/11/2017 15:16:04

Markets & Retail News

New thinking needed on seafood products

62

Retail News.indd 62

Performance food Obesity is costing the “nation a fortune...so we should encourage people to eat more fish

Photo Humber Business

were now looking is everything and more closely at the Saucy Fish fits that type of nutrients in perfectly’. their diets and hithBut it was also time erto unusual foods, for the industry to such as seaweed and look outside the box algae, were becoming at further innovafashionable. tion. One idea, she ‘Fish is so much suggested, was to better to help us stay develop products young and I believe around fish flakes Above: Claire Nuttall everyone can afford which could then be THE time has come for to eat healthily. Fish added to pasta or rice is not only delicious, with various sauces some fresh thinking but it has long term to make a healthy, and ideas about how but satisfying meal. to present fish to the preventative benefits,’ she added. ‘And Earlier, Jack Macpublic, the Humber it is one of the purest Intyre, lead analyst Seafood Summit was foods you can eat. at Global Data, spoke told last month.

‘Malnutrition is not about the growing Claire Nuttall, just about the Third potential of the seaCEO and innovation World – it is here in food sector. strategist with the the UK because peoMore than a quarter Brand Incubator, an ple are not eating the of the population now organisation that right nutrients. eat out at least once helps businesses ‘Obesity is costing a week, creating a UK innovate and grow, the nation a fortune sector delivering 75 delivered a passionbecause a lot of food million kilos of seaate talk urging the is over-processed. food a year and this seafood industry to But fish is a perforwould grow by 2.7 take another look at mance food and we per cent a year over its product strategy. should encourage the next four years.

She said: ‘One of people to eat more Demand for seafood the big challenges in food service would today is how to justify of it.’

Saucy Fish, Nuttall more or less increase premiums and you said, had changed in line with that have to include fish a lot of ideas about figure. in that. Asking them seafood and the comSeafood, he added, to eat seafood more pany should be proud could offer both than once a week is of itself – ‘branding healthy and indultough.’

Nuttall said 10 years ago life was all about money, but in the last five years trends had started to change, with healthy eating becoming fashionable.

As a result, people pursuing healthy lifestyles were prepared to pay more for their meals. She described this movement as ‘health hedonism’.

‘Health is trendy, fashionable and cool.

People want to stay young and look good, they want to stay in the workplace and they want to keep doing things into their seventies.’

Above: Healthy eating has become more fashionable This meant they

Scotland ‘heavily reliant’ on EU workers

”

gent eating at the same time.

Jonathan Banks, head of Jonathan Banks Associates, which tracks and predicts consumer trends, said meat consumption was in decline while fish sales, especially in the chilled sector, were on the increase.

The industry, he said, now needed to look at increasing the number of fish consumers with new ideas such as seafood snacks.

Above: Hazel Curtis of Seafish and Simon Dwyer of the Grimsby Fish Merchants’ Association at the Humber Seafood Summit

THE heavy dependence of the UK seafood processing industry on EU workers came under the spotlight at the Humber Seafood Summit in Grimsby. And it was highest in the Grampian region of Scotland.

But questions were also raised about what will happen if many of these workers decide to return home after Brexit. And one Scottish member of the audience said this was already happening north of the border and was leading to problems.

Hazel Curtis, chief economist at Seafish, told the conference that earlier this year Seafish had carried out a detailed survey on the make-up of people working in fish processing.

‘There are a lot of EU workers, especially from eastern Europe, in this industry. You only have to go to Scotland to sea health and safety notices written in Polish and other East European languages.’

The results showed that 57 per cent of workers were from the UK, with 42 per cent from the EU. The remaining one per cent came from other parts of the world.

But the processing sector also offered fairly secure work, with 82 per cent on permanent contracts and 14 per cent working for agencies.

And there were also some contrasting regional differences, with 70 per cent of workers in Scotland from the EU, while on Humberside (mainly Grimsby) the figure was just 18 per cent - or around 1,000 people.

Simon Dwyer, secretariat to Grimsby Fish Merchants’ Association and a key part of cluster organisation Seafood Grimsby and Humber, said: ‘We have 5,000 jobs and it is an interesting statistic that we could be looking for another 1,000 to replace the 18 per cent we could lose.’

Curtis said it was important to keep up with the (changing) trends in labour movements, and for that reason Seafish would now be gathering data four times a year.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:12:52

Markets & Retail News

Under the sea fish restaurant planned An Oslo firm of architects has unveiled plans to construct Europe’s first undersea restaurant off the southern coast of Norway.

SNØHETTA, which also has an office in New York, says the project will also help to promote the country’s aquaculture and fishing traditions as well as give diners a unique insight into marine life.

Customers will be seated around five metres under the water watching fish swim past them. The restaurant will also double as an aquarium and marine research centre.

Snøhetta says its design is inspired by Norway’s rocky coast, with part of the structure below the sea and the other half resting on the shore. The walls will be a metre thick in order to withstand pressure from the water.

It will primarily be a seafood restaurant run by Danish chef Nicolai Ellitsgaard Pedersen, with seating for around 100 people.

The building will be simply called Under – a word that the architects say is very similar to ‘wonder’, when translated into Norwegian.

It will be built near the village of Båly in Norway’s Lindesnes region, on the country’s southernmost tip.

The research centre part of the project will look at everything from aquaculture developments to the study of fish behaviour, macroalgae and shells, to looking after and

restoring damaged seabeds.

The dining room will be painted in deep blue and green hues ‘inspired by the seabed, seaweed and rough sea’.

There will also be a champagne bar, featuring more subdued tones, intended to evoke shells, rocks and sand.

The researchers will also try to make the seabed around the restaurant friendly to fish and shellfish.

The structure will be clad in a concrete shell with a coarse surface that invites mussels to cling on.

Over time, as the mollusc community becomes denser, the development aims to ‘become an artificial mussel reef that rinses the sea and attracts more marine life to its purified waters’, according to the architect.

It is hoped to have the new restaurant open

by March 2019.

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Retail News.indd 63

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14/07/2014 14:54:48 14/07/2014 06/11/2017 14:54:48 12:25:29

Opinion – Inside track

Back to front

BY NICK JOY

I

HEAR again and again, whether it be agriculture or aquaculture, that we can’t get staff who want to work in the country or in an isolated area.

It seems that people are being taught from an early age that what they should really want to do is sit in a dark room and stare morosely into a computer screen until it is time to go home.

Sure, many professions are well paid and living in town offers the attraction of having everything on your doorstep, but when you start to think of the level of illogic involved in the way things are it does beggar belief.

We have a rising tide of unhappiness and mental health issues, the cure for which - taking it slower, less stress, more hobbies, sunlight and exercise – often lies in being outside.

More and more people are using their weekends to get out of town, and it seems mad to me to earn a larger salary just so that you can escape to the country.

I understand that money gives you choice but if that choice comes at the expense of your health and wellbeing then it’s time to think again.

Why not spend the week doing exciting things in the countryside and do the dull and boring stuff on the computer at the weekend? It just seems that the whole world is back to front.

Of course, the countryside will not suit all people. My dear sister adores London and feels she is being tortured if she has to leave.

The countryside does not need everyone, but we need people from a young age to see that quality of life often is far better than quality of earnings. I am not arguing for poor pay in rural industries, but until the government and the public are willing to pay more for food, this is the way it is going to be.

The problem is that the powers that be value academic achievement above the generally lower paid and physical career paths of food producers.

How many politicians, lawyers, doctors and so on do you know without a degree? How many teachers are going to teach that higher learning is not critical to someone’s success? The pragmatic people in the countryside are very rarely represented in or to government.

When I was young (off I go again) we were taught woodwork, basic pipework, electrics and iron work, and we left school thinking that this was what we needed to know in order to get on in the world.

It is time these skills were brought back into the curriculum, starting in primary school. The intention should be that every child acquires a basic understanding of how to work with their hands before leaving secondary education. Even if that child does not want to have a career using their hands, at least they will have respect for the people who do.

It does seem a long way ahead to start talking about our industries to primary schools but we have a long-term problem.

If we don’t start to talk to our future staff at a very early age and lobby government to teach them the balance between manual skills and academic skills, we will find ourselves without staff.

The government has understood the need for engineers and though they do not understand the countryside, they are beginning to understand that we need food.

66

Nick Joy.indd 66

“a Being food

producer should be seen as the province of the high achiever

”

Scotland depends on its food and drink sector more than most countries and maybe it is time for Scotland to stand out in this area.

We are renowned historically for our academics and business people, and now we should concentrate on becoming a country where being a food producer is seen as the province of the high achiever.

So let’s talk with educators, badger government and advocate our careers. Let’s not try to fit into the system, which clearly is biased against us, but change it and change people’s mindsets.

I have had a career of well over 30 years in this industry and loved every moment. As I grew older, my abilities at sea waned but my experience offered me balance and I moved into management.

This path is rare nowadays, especially for someone without a degree. Let’s make it easier for the next generations to have fun and excitement in a fantastic environment! I hate the thought of no one in the future having the sort of career I have had. FF

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

06/11/2017 15:09:57

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11/01/2017 06/11/2017 11:56:06 12:26:37

Aquaculture America 2018

February 19-22, 2018 Paris Las Vegas Las Vegas, Nevada USA THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE & EXPOSITION OF

Associate Sponsors Americas Tilapia Alliance American Veterinary Medical Association Aquacultural Engineering Society Aquaculture Association of Canada Catfish Farmers of America

Global Aquaculture Alliance International Association of Aquaculture Economics and Management Latin American Chapter WAS Striped Bass Growers Association US Trout Farmers Association World Aquatic Veterinary Medical Association Zebrafish Husbandry Association

Hosted by: California Aquaculture Association

For More Information Contact:

Conference Manager P.O. Box 2302 | Valley Center, CA 92082 USA Tel: +1.760.751.5005 | Fax: +1.760.751.5003 Email: worldaqua@was.org | www.was.org AA18 IA ad CMYK.indd 1

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