The damaging environmental impacts of salmon farming in Scotland are many and have been well known for over 25 years. As this article from COAST highlights the frustrations with Scottish Institutions who seem to be blind to these impacts. Time for the Scottish NGOs to find a voice? Bob Earll.
COAST ‘After strategically withdrawing the 2015 application for an expansion of 60% in production, just before a public hearing was due, the Scottish Salmon Company (SSC) now intend to double the production of their “battery salmon factory” in the waters of Arran’s Marine Protected Area (MPA). Despite vehement opposition by our island community to any expansion, the SSC have also publicly stated their interest in further new salmon farm developments in the ‘wider Arran area’.
A national disgrace, the controversial salmon farming industry is out of control. Every week newspapers reveal their environmental impact on Scotland’s precious West Coast and on animal welfare. Just this past year they have thrown away 10 million salmon, and their use of sea lice pesticides, toxic to shellfish, soared by 1000%. The SSC farms in Loch Fyne are the “liciest” in the West Highlands.
It is mind-boggling that our government approves Marine Protected Areas, but is going to allow big industry to trash the same areas with more untreated effluent and chemicals. We question the independence of a Scottish Government that seem happy to “sell our seas”, rubber stamping industry’s aim to double production by 2030. Has Roseanna Cunningham, Cabinet Secretary for the Environment, ever seen what it looks like under a salmon cage?
A bacterial mat of Beggiatoa – ‘sewage fungus’ – on top off rotting fish food under a salmon cage. No normal marine life lives on the surface and sediment is anoxic and devoid of the usual worms and bivalves.
Ahead of the planning application for Arran, COAST and others are calling for the SSC to hold transparent public meetings. The attitude of the SSC to local community opinion was revealed in leaked emails in 2012. Dr Rebecca Dean, the current Head of Environment for SSC, described Arran’s community as potentially worse to deal with than the Harris community, ‘a guaranteed vipers nest’. The same e-mail thread clearly shows their strategic approach of ‘let the locals get used to it’ then increase the fish farm’s size over time.
The industry uses its money and influence to greenwash its image and pacify government and communities; Sport Scotland for instance is delighted with the industry’s investment in the Scottish game of shinty while our university graduates are being coached and paid to be “industry ready”. This “community support” also happens locally; through the SSC’s collaboration with Theatre Scotland, the company’s activity leaflets are being distributed to Arran and other West Coast children through local primary schools, promoting their artificially coloured, pesticide-treated salmon to our children as a superfood.
This is a call to all Scottish political parties to get their act together and stand up for West Coast communities and environment before it’s too late.
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