Aquaculture for all

Five figure salmon escape

Salmonids Environment +1 more

Around 20,000 salmon have escaped from a site run by Scottish Seafarms, off the island of Mull.

The escape, which occurred at Bloody Bay, just north of Tobermory (pictured), was reported to have occurred on March 25th, and has been attributed to a hole in the net caused by predators.

The company has not released any more details, but seals are the most likely culprits. The salmon involved averaged 1.3 kg apiece and would have been scheduled for harvest in 2018. If all had grown to 5 kg in that time they would have added up to 100 tonnes of fish.

1300 wrasse, which were being used as cleanerfish on the site and averaged 60 g each were also reported to have escaped.

The incident is the single biggest escape to have occurred in Scotland since May 2016, when 30,000 fish escaped a site in the Outer Hebrides, prior to that no such escape on that scale had occurred in the country since 2014.

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