Comment
BY DR MARTIN JAFFA
Huffing and puffin Seabirds are finding their food sources diminishing, but who’s to blame?
O
n 15 May 2021, the Herald newspaper included a two-page commercial feature placed by the Coastal Communi�es Network who claim that the safety of Sco�sh water is being compromised as the economic drivers of open cage salmon farming are given more import(sic) than ecological integrity. This is their take on the impacts of salmon farming, but I would suggest that this feature would be be�er described as nothing more than a NIMBY whinge. I say this because of the eight people who appear in this feature, not one originates from the west coast. As far as I can ascertain, five of the complainants are from outside Scotland and two are anglers from the East coast plus one other. One of the people featured is Ka�e Tunn, a Skye based ar�st and ocean advocate who moved up from London about six years ago. Interes�ngly, she recently appeared on a BBC TV programme called Wanted: A Simple Life in which she advised another young single female who also wanted
to move to the Isle of Skye from London (available on iPlayer). Among some of the issues Ms Tunn raises in this feature is that seabird popula�ons are in decline. She says: “Few people are aware that the main cause of this is a lack of food generated by overfishing.” She adds that “These fish aren’t even used for human consump�on. The capelins and sand eels that go into fishmeal are vital for wildlife like puffins – just one species that suffers a knock-on effect from these expanding salmon farms.” The Sco�sh Government’s Fishery Sta�s�cs for 2019 do not show landings for either sand eel or capelin. Looking back at historic reports, capelin is never men�oned, and this is likely because most capelin is caught north of Iceland and therefore unavailable to UK boats. Sand eel also does not feature in the 2019 sta�s�cs as a separate species and is likely grouped together with other species because catches are now so small. Ms Tunn associates the sand eel fishery with salmon farming but looking back at the historical record, the first landings of sand eels were made in 1974 with a total of 173,556 hundredweight (cwt) (8,817 tonnes). This does not mean that sand eels were not caught prior to 1974, it just means that they were not recorded separately before then. This is not unusual as
in salmon feed has “Fishmeal been greatly reduced ” 26
Martin Jaffa.indd 26
www.fishfarmermagazine.com
07/06/2021 16:17:01
