The UK’s first offshore scallop farm will be trialled off the Yorkshire coast through the use of pioneering and sustainable new methods.  Building on the success of reintroducing oysters into the Humber, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust is now supporting Scarborough company SeaGrown Ltd in its efforts.

The trust will partner with the firm on the project, which is being funded by a grant from Seafood Innovation Fund (SIF).  Dr James Wood, fisheries and research manager at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said: “This is an important trial both regionally and nationally, where the emergent offshore aquaculture sector has a vital role to play in supporting the country’s increasing demand for seafood.

New approaches need to be carefully designed to ensure they’re sustainable and balance their impacts with conservation of our seas. “This system has intentionally been designed to be low impact with this compromise in mind.” SeaGrown’s seaweed farm, built off the coast of Scarborough, has pioneered a low-impact system that only uses the top 16ft (five metres) of the water to grow three species of seaweed on a succession of floating lines.  This new system is robust enough to meet the challenging conditions of the North Sea, and its success inspired this latest project to introduce scallops to the farm. To read more click here