Land-based & Recirculation – Gigha Halibut
W
hen Otter Ferry Seafish made the decision to farm halibut in 1990, they
assumed that it would only take a couple of years to get things moving. However, twenty-four years later they are only on their third crop. But all of the time and effort has paid off, as Gigha halibut has garnered a glowing reputation, won a string of awards and is being used by some of the best chefs in the UK. ‘The move to farm halibut has been a process of evolution’, explains Alastair Barge, owner of Otter Ferry Seafish and Managing Director of Gigha Halibut. ‘Otter Ferry started in 1968 farming trout. In the ‘70s we moved to salmon, plus cod and lobster and then, in 1990, we started with halibut, which ticked all the boxes in terms of market demand and being well suited to conditions in Scotland.’
The decision to farm halibut was also prompted by the increasing difficulties they faced competing in the farmed salmon market. ‘We
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had developed a land-based system for ongrowing salmon, which was very successful in the early days. But when the cage guys got the hang of it we simply couldn’t compete in terms of volume – the capital cost of the tanks ruled out expansion. It was a shame really, because we produced lovely fish’, says Barge.
Being left with a tank system, Barge considered going into salmon broodstock and smolts. ‘However, we could see that the big companies were becoming more integrated, so we decided to switch to halibut. A tank system suits flatfish, which is why we’ve stuck for longer with the halibut’, he says. ‘The initial broodstock ar- rived from Iceland wild capture in 1990. At the time there was a lot of interest in the potential of hali- but, but it quickly became apparent that there were difficulties at the hatchery stage.’ Because of this, Marine Harvest decided to take their halibut to Norway. ‘So we went from thinking that we’d have a large hatchery to having no customer’, says Barge.
‘But we decided to persevere, and in 2006 we set of Gigha Halibut and got investment on a crop-by- crop basis. The main shareholder is Hoult Leisure, which is run by the people who owned Gigha before it was sold back to the community. Otter Ferry Seafish is a 25 per cent shareholder.’ Gigha is now on its third
crop, which underlines just how painstakingly slow the process of farming halibut is. ‘Halibut is slow. People ring me up and ask if they can have more halibut and I tell
them that there’s a four-year lead time, and that I’ll probably need four million quid as well’, laughs Barge. ‘It takes around twelve years before the female halibut begins producing eggs. We have a broodstock of around 200, which are kept in a tank on the mainland at Otter Ferry. They matured a couple of years ago, so they’re right in their prime.’ Most of the Gigha broodstock
spawn once a year. And because they lose an enormous amount of weight after spawning, it is
“
Gigha is only on its third crop, which underlines how slow the process of farming halibut is
www.fishfarmer-magazine.com
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