Massive Expansion at Dunstaffnage gets approved by SEPA

SEPA has just issued notification that it intends to allow the fish farm at Dunstaffnage an increase in permitted biomass from 1300 tonnes to 2350 tonnes.

Save Seil Sound had registered an objection to the application, as had the Argyll District Salmon Fisheries Board. To nobody’s surprise Marine Scotland had found nothing wrong with the proposal. There’s no sign of any comment from Scottish Natural Heritage at all.

As we know, using biomass data filed by the operating companies as a guide to what is actually happening below the seabed is currently under review, with the industry lobbying hard against the use of feedstuff tonnages as a proxy. Once again a company is rushing through an application, just in case the Scottish Government wakes up and does something rash like imposing a system of regulation that actually works.

Or even incentivises operators to move production onto land, using taxation allowances for those who do and polluter pays penalties for those who don’t!

The Dunstaffage farm is located just outside Oban in a spot that’s widely used by local residents, having one of Argyll’s very few sandy beaches. People are swimming from here in all Seasons.

The permit will allow the operators to dump in our Scottish water column not only “Fish excreta, uneaten food and other substances” but also a catalogue of rather unsavoury materials including antiseptics and biocides, including the deadly Emamectin Benzoate, use of which is currently subject to investigation at UK level, the UK TAG report having been delayed thank to the December General Election.

For those who don’t know, EMBz kills all crustaceans and stays active on the seabed for several years, traces having been found in measurable quantities four and a half years after the fish farm in question was removed.

SEPA know this - it was their own research that proved this. When they first got the results and warned the industry that they proposed to ban its use the result was a declaration of war by the SPPO and threats of legal action by the American Merck Corporation, who employed tame scientists to trash the SEPA research. As a result SEPA ran further trials on various sites and had the results peer reviewed. Everything they had said at first was confirmed, but the industry had won another couple of years to poison our environment.

Astonishingly, the new consent will allow each treatment to use, over over a 7 day period, a total of EMBz not to exceed 898.95 grams. They might as well have made it a round kilogram.

Checking the seabed for a healthy environment will, as always, depend on there being found two species of “re-worker polychaete worms” toiling away on the seabed to clean everything up!

Given that the biomass is to go up by 48% one might be forgiven for expecting to find that conditions on site right now were just lovely at 1300 tonnes. Sadly, on checking SEPA’s website that doesn’t seem to be quite true.

The latest figures on SEPA’s website are only up to September 2019 and right now scotlandsaquaculture has a glitch that prevents Dunstaffnage being checked. From what’s available it seems that the current production run began in May 2018 and by September 2019 biomass on sIte had grown to 919 tonnes. During the period in every month salmon had been dying in the cages, ending with a total of
81750 kilograms.

That’s to say nearly 82 tonnes of salmon died over the period, not too bad compared with some farms that produced mortalities of up to 40% in the same period.

An update will be posted as soon as figures are publicly available.

Finally, you might think that the “Scottish” Sea Farms Limited would have some concern about the Scottish environment, or even that they might in fact be Scottish, but that’s not the case. They are registered in England and wholly owned by a Norwegian company that in turn belongs in equal share to Salmar ASA and Leroy ASA, both Norwegian. Happily for them their “Scottish” operation generated profit of £59.735 million in their last accounts, on a profit margin of 31%. On these figures they probably think they can accept some dead fish along the road.

The bay on a wintry day, when wild women were swimming.

Back in Norway the boss is watching.