Organic Sea Harvest
A sense of place Alex MacInnes believes the link between farming and the community is hugely important BY ROBERT OUTRAM
S
cotland’s first salmon farming start-up for some 30 years is set to see its first harvest this month. Organic Sea Harvest (OSH) operates two sites on Skye, Invertote and Culnacnoc; it is not only Scotland’s first independent salmon farmer in decades but also the country’s only farmer completely dedicated to only producing cer�fied organic salmon in this sector. The route to the first harvest has not been easy, however, as Alex Mac-
32
Organic Sea Harvest.indd 32
Innes, a director and one of the farming partners, explains. MacInnes, who is also part of the team heading up the farming opera�ons at the company, says: “Our fish have performed well… it wasn’t an easy start for them. We had a lot of challenges – the perfect storm between regula�on, and Covid-19 – and we’ve done that at the Invertote site without some of the infrastructure [that we had planned] because Covid delayed everything. “We didn’t have a feed barge, for example. But we have some very experienced and capable staff who were working without feed barges in their early careers and they are very knowledgeable about manually hand feeding the stock. There always has to be a plan B which for us in this case worked well and now everybody’s looking forward to harves�ng.” OSH has also run into planning permission setbacks over its next two proposed sites, which has been disappoin�ng for a business that has always set out, not only to produce fish with the highest standards of welfare and sustainability, but also to be an integral part of its local community. OSH was started as a business in 2016 but, MacInnes explains, the idea goes back at least 10 years.
Above: Birds eye view of invertote Left: Alex MacInnes Top right: Ove Thu Right: Organic Smolt
www.fishfarmermagazine.com
10/05/2021 15:40:56
