New Norwegian sea lice limits prompt call for similar Scottish action

FishNewsEu.com
Janaury 27, 2010

The Salmon & Trout Association (S&TA) has called on Scottish Government and the salmon farming industry to harmonise standards of environmental protection between Norway and Scotland.

The ‘wild fish’ campaigning organisation says that the West Highlands and Islands of Scotland is characterised as a ‘dumping ground’ for bad practice in parasite control.

Following the introduction by the authorities in Norway of stringent new limits for parasite numbers on their salmon farms, the Salmon and Trout Association (S&TA), Britain’s leading gamefish conservation charity, is calling on the Scottish Government to apply the same rigorous criteria to salmon farming operations in the West Highlands and Islands.

Reacting to a severe increase in sea lice infestations on farms during the autumn of 2009, the Norwegian Ministry of Fisheries has decreed that this spring numbers of the sea lice in the country’s marine salmon farms must not exceed 0.1 lice per fish (one louse per ten salmon per pen). Part of the rationale for this move is a determination to minimise any “population-reducing effect” on juvenile wild salmonids as they migrate past the coastal salmon farms to the open sea. If the numbers of sea lice are not within the permitted limits, then an order for the mass slaughter of all the farmed salmon in the pen may be issued. The Scottish salmon farming industry’s target for sea lice in the spring is 0.5 lice per fish.

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