Wrasse farming initiative announced

The partnership agreement will see over 250,000 commercially farmed wrasse deployed in marine sites over the next three years. Numbers will be split equally between SSC and Meridian as the potential benefits of introducing the wrasse, or ‘cleaner fish’, for animal welfare and the marine environment will be carefully studied.

While widely shown to reduce sea lice on salmon, this is one of the first full scale operations to farm and deploy wrasse in Scotland. The initiative, which is supported by The Crown Estate, aims to show the value of wrasse to help manage levels of sea lice and reduce the dependency on veterinary treatments. Both companies will introduce the wrasse alongside other husbandry methods that help counter the naturally occurring parasite that attaches itself to both farmed and wild salmon.

SSC, which already successfully pioneered single generation, single loch, synchronised fallow systems as a firewall against the build-up of sea lice, was the first Scottish salmon farming company to engage with the concept of commercially farming wrasse. Working with Viking Fish Farms at Ardtoe three and a half years ago, the company developed the first initial commercial production of Ballan wrasse which was thereafter co-opted into the Ecofish project.

At the same time, Meridian Salmon Group was instrumental in initiating a multi partner funded pilot project at Otter Ferry. The project successfully recruited the necessary broodstock and established the protocols required for commercial production of wrasse. In the course of the project some 15,000 juvenile wrasse have been produced demonstrating commercial survival rates.

Findings from the latest SSC/Meridian project will be shared with the wider industry through the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation to ensure that all developments can benefit the Scottish salmon farming sector as a whole as it competes to gain share of domestic and international markets.