Nearly 50,000 salmon escape from Argyll fish farm after Storm Ellen

Nearly 50,000 salmon escaped from an Argyll fish farm in Scotland which was damaged by Storm Ellen (file photo)
Getty Images
Rebecca Speare-Cole26 August 2020

Nearly 50,000 salmon escaped from an Argyll fish farm in Scotland which was damaged by Storm Ellen.

The North Carradale farm, near Campbeltown, suffered damage to four of its 10 fish pens.

It came as Storm Ellen brought strong winds to the country last week.

The company said mooring ropes attached to seabed anchors had broken.

The pens were secured by August 22 and put back in their original location on Tuesday.

Just over 30,000 of the farmed salmon also died as a result of the incident.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency told the BBC that it "shares concerns" regarding the loss of salmon.

She added: "Whilst we are confident that marine pens have been returned to their authorised position and there was no significant pollution, we are liaising with Mowi and Marine Scotland, who have responsibility for fish escapes and their reporting."

The North Carradale farm contained 550,700 salmon before the four pens were damaged.

Mowi said 48,834 salmon escaped, 30,616 died and 125,900 were harvested from the damaged pens.

The farm has now sent the 4.8cm thick rope to Aberdeen for further testing.

Environmental campaigners have raised concerns about the escaped fish breeding with wild Scottish salmon.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in