Comment
BY DR MARTIN JAFFA
A blinkered view The SNP-Green policy platform does not give much detail, and it displays little understanding of the facts around salmon farming
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here has been much debate as to the sense in the SNP allowing the Green Party to join them in a coalition. Arguably the SNP have weakened their position by providing the seven Green MSPs with much greater power than the public intended. The result of the parties’ agreement is published in a shared draft policy document, Working Together to Build a Greener, Fairer, Independent Scotland, which runs to 51 pages. Their shared policy on aquaculture appears on page 46 and covers less than a page. Yet although aquaculture receives little coverage, the salmon farming industry should be concerned about this new coalition. This is because the Green Party policy on aquaculture seems to have developed from contact between their environmental spokesman and an anti-salmon farming activist. Apart from this one source, the Green Party has shown little interest in hearing any other view and certainly not that of the industry itself. The Green Party position on salmon farming is that they want to see a transition to closed containment production, despite little understanding of what this means. Back in July, the Scottish Daily Mail reported that Green Party co-leader Lorna Slater wanted to see all salmon farms shut down but, in the interview, she was forced to admit that she didn’t know where Scotland’s salmon farms were located. The draft shared strategy includes four recommendations, the first of which – an independent view of the current regulatory regime for fish farming – has already been announced. The second recommendation is for a vision and strategy for sustainable aquaculture. This already exists. Salmon farming is inherently sustainable and there is already a government plan to expand the industry by 2030. Environmental protection and community benefits, mentioned in the document, are also already part of the existing strategy. For many years, the industry’s critics have claimed that salmon farming has damaged the environment, yet when they are asked to provide an example, there is a deathly silence. At most, they point the finger at the seabed under the net pens, an area totalling the size of a couple of 18-hole golf courses for all the salmon farms in Scotland, yet it is already well established that this waste is reabsorbed back into the environment and, as no salmon farm site is a permanent structure, the farms can be moved, increasing the speed of seabed recovery. I have been around long enough to see how salmon farms have
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boosted the life of dying communities that lost young people to the big cities to find work. Some salmon companies have now resorted to building homes for their staff, who are priced out of the local housing market by the same incomers who criticise salmon farm development. The third recommendation is a programme of work to better protect wildlife and the environment. I repeat the question: where is the evidence that salmon farming is damaging wildlife and the environment? The greatest number of complaints about the impact of salmon farming come from the anglers who blame salmon farming for the decline of wild salmon and sea trout. They can provide only the most circumstantial evidence to support their claims, but by contrast since the first farmed salmon smolts were put to sea in 1967 anglers have caught and killed 244,551 salmon and 357,170 sea trout in the area for their sport. The third recommendation also mentions the Salmon Interactions Working Group (SIWG). The makeup of the group ensured that those supporting wild fish were always in the majority. Thus, the group decided that salmon farms did have an impact on wild fish and therefore the discussion focused on what should be done to protect wild fish – but only from salmon farms, not from anglers or any other of the pressures faced by wild salmon populations. This recommendation also refers to the spatially adaptive sea lice risk assessment framework, even though one of the partner organisations – the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) – told the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Economy and Connectivity committee that sea lice from salmon farms were not responsible for the decline of wild fish stocks. Wrasse and escapes are also on the agenda. Until salmon farms showed an interest in wrasse, their use and welfare were of little concern. They were fished to provide bait in lobster and crab pots. They were perceived as having no value, until salmon farms were interested in them.
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They can provide only the most circumstantial evidence to support their claims
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www.fishfarmermagazine.com
13/09/2021 16:54:08
