Press Release: "Failing Fish Farms - 18% rated "poor" by SEPA in 2015"

Download press release and media backgrounder as a PDF online here

The Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture, 26 February 2017

Failing Fish Farms

- 18% rated "poor" by SEPA in 2015

Exclusive information obtained via FOI from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) lifts the lid on the "poor" performance of Scotland's marine salmon farms - with almost a fifth (18%) classified by SEPA as failing and responsible for "at least one significant breach". Norwegian-owned Marine Harvest, Scotland's largest salmon farming company, is the worst operator with 13 "failing" salmon farms in 2015 (that's 27% of the 49 marine salmon farms operated by Marine Harvest Scotland).

The number of marine salmon farms assessed by SEPA as "poor" rose from 37 in 2014 to 51 in 2015 (the worst year on record). Failures reported in 2015 included "biomass exceedance", "chemical residue exceedance", "insufficient monitoring", "chemical use exceedance" and "unsatisfactory seabed surveys".

In November 2016 SEPA published their 'Compliance Assessment' scheme which rated 58 fish farms as "poor" in 2015 (an increase from 2014 when there were 42 fish farms assessed as "poor"). Importantly, the data did not name the operators prompting a FOI request from GAAIA.

SEPA stated in a press release (10 November 2016): "Scotland’s fish-farming sector has seen a drop from 86% to 82% compliance over the past year, and SEPA is presently engaging with industry representatives to improve this."

However, compliance for freshwater cage fish farms, tanks and hatcheries was much higher with 98% of freshwater cage fish farms classified as being 'Excellent' or 'Good' in 2011 and 99% of tank farms and hatcheries classified as 'Excellent' or 'Good' in 2011 [1].

Based upon documents disclosed by SEPA in February 2017 (via F0187239 and F0187139), GAAIA can now reveal:

18% of marine cage fish farms were rated "poor" in 2015
2015 is the worst year with 51 rated as "poor" (up from 37 in 2014)
Marine Harvest is the worst operator followed by the Scottish Salmon Company, Scottish Seafarms, Cooke Aquaculture, Hjaltland Seafarms (Grieg Seafood) and Loch Duart
The 16 worst salmon farms (who all "failed" for three years out of the five years of SEPA's compliance assessment) included four sites operated by Cooke Aquaculture, four by the Scottish Salmon Company, three by Grieg Seafood, three by Marine Harvest, one by Scottish Seafarms and one by Wester Ross Fisheries