In a rebranding exercise designed to separate the company, revived by reinvestment and restructuring, from its past, the salmon farming Lighthouse Caledonia has been renamed.
It is now The Scottish Salmon Company, continuing to operate from its HQ in Edinburgh.
When Lighthouse Caledonia was going through hard times, as we reported at the time, it caused great anxiety in Argyll where it is a significant employer, not least at Cairndow in northwest Cowal where its processing and packing plant is situated.
Aquaculture is a significant industry throughout Scotland, although salmon farming is controversial from environmental and angling perspectives.
If one sentence were to sum fin fish aquaculture up then the last sentence in this article must be it;
“Aquaculture is a significant industry throughout Scotland, although salmon farming is controversial from environmental and angling perspectives”.
But when you break the component parts down, all is not what it seems or needs to be:
“Significant industry”; finfish farming is a major contender within the Scottish economy but from my observations asserts far more influence in government and parliamentary circles than its importance should dictate. In fact from an environmentalist point of view parliamentary meetings lavished with “free” salmon platters, and aquaculture conferences arranged by Holyrood Publications, being supported by industries with a vested interest is in my view far from healthy, for “open debate” and true democracy.
At one conference opened by the Cabinet Secretary for the Environment, the speaker from the salmon industry failed to address any real environmental aspects and gave an inaccurate account of how the salmon industry was effectively a “saviour”, producing food for the hungry; this could not be further from the truth, with somewhere between three to five tonnes of fish to produce one tonne of salmon; it would make far more environmental sense and efficiency to use the three to five tonnes of fresh fish direct to feed hungry people in third World countries.
Another fallacy surrounding the fin fish farming industry is its employment potential, which has decreased dramatically with mechanisation during the last twenty years or so. All in all the fin fish industry carries far more clout in political circles than it deserves. This comes at a cost to other industries; such as angling and tourism. But it shouldn’t have to…
The fin fish farming industry could and should do much, much better. The industry representatives continue to extrude lame excuses as to why they can’t comply with environmental concerns; most are nothing more than lame excuses, driven by profit motivated Norwegian employers.
If fin fish farms were properly placed, with regard to their natural environment, that includes proximity to existing native fauna and flora, sufficient tidal flows, and clear from important Scottish salmon running rivers, many of the “problems” would be reduced.
If fin fish farms utilised the same principle as modern-day oil tankers, which are “double skinned”, again many problems would simply disappear; simply by installing a second net, an anti-predator/containment net, a net the same mesh size as the original fish farm net, then most of the “problems” facing fin fish farms would vanish, and not kill a multitude of other species as purported by the industry, this could even mean a more people being employed, to maintain and clean the additional nets, as well as more employment in the net making industry.
These ideas and comments are continuously hit by the same barrage of lame excuses as to why the fin fish farms can’t comply. Why, in Argyll even SNH representatives fight their corner. While this is allowed to continue nothing will change.
The oil transport industry could improve safety and diminish environmental consequences on a global scale, why can’t a profitable industry in Scotland do the same?
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