Meridian Salmon Orkney aquaculture
Above left: feeding fish using a boat-based blower at the Fara site.
Above right: slaughtering on the harvesting vessel.
Below: feeding at the Pegal site
how to avoid or jump over sonic barriers. But it varies from site to site – sometimes it’s the sites closest to seal haul-outs that have the fewest problems. ‘I was one of the fi rst people to sign up for the new seal management course at the NAFC in Shetland, along with two other Meridian staff.
‘Other than seals, our mortalities are very low. We have had problems with PD (pancreas disease) but then I think most people have.’
Keeping things simple
We called in on four existing Hoy sites, all on the Scapa Flow side of the island. The 1000 tonne Fara site lies off Fara Island, near Lyness, and is the next to harvest. The Lyrawa site is stocked with organic salmon, acquired when they bought Rysa Salmon, and has a pro- duction capacity of around 400 tonnes. Pegal is another 400 tonne site, while further north is the 1000 tonne Chalmers site which they were harvesting at the time of my visit. Robert explained that they use a simple boat- based feeding system rather than automatic feeders or feed barges on their Hoy sites. Some of the other Orkney sites use feed barges. They have six people employed across the four sites, while harvesting is carried out by contract staff using a Meridian-owned wellboat which also acts as the killing station.
He said: ‘We tend to keep things simple if we can. The fi sh haven’t far to go in the wellboat – just to Stromness where they are offl oaded for lorry transport across mainland Orkney to
Fish Farmer September/October 2011 32
the processing plant at Kirkwall.’ He explained that the Kirkwall plant just carries out basic gutting – most of the fi sh are then transferred to Bellshill, near Glasgow, for fi lleting or portioning, while some end up going to Poland for smoking or other secondary processing.
Harvesting was in full swing at the Chalmers site when we arrived. This was the last batch of fi sh at this site, which will now undergo a 6-month fallow period, through to March or April next year, before it is re-stocked. Robert explained that this is longer than normal, but was caused by the need to align production between the sites. The fi sh had already been graded using an in-cage grid and were averaging around 5 kg. Robert and his colleagues said they were happy with the production from the site, even though there were a number of smaller PD fi sh left in this fi nal harvest.
The harvest vessel was equipped with IRAS
fi sh pumps, which lifted the fi sh onto a sorting tray, from where they were dispatched using Aquaculture Innovations MT4 stunners. The gills were then cut manually before the fi sh passed into an ice-fi lled tank. They estimated that the harvest of 8,000 fi sh would take about 2-3 hours.
Robert explained that the contractor, Derek Gunn Engineering, is currently kitting out a new, more sophisticated harvesting vessel so will be able to provide a complete harvesting service using his own boat in the near future. Overall, Robert said that the new company
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