Animal activists free 15,000 farmed fish to their deaths

POLICE have warned fish farmers to increase their security after 15,000 halibut were released from their cages in an attack believed to have been carried out by animal rights activists.
Thousands of dead fish are being washed up along the west coast of Scotland after the raid at Kames Marine Fish Farm, near Oban. The perpetrators are thought to have attacked last week. Detectives believe that the attack could be linked to a spate of other farm attacks throughout the country. The letters ALF (Animal Liberation Front) were spray-painted near by.



The loss is estimated to have cost the fish farm at least ?500,000 as boats, cranes and offices were also vandalised. The halibut died from starvation or getting caught in seaweed. They were also being eaten by herring gulls and otters.

The fish farmer, who did not wish to be identified, said: ?They claim they liberated them into the sea but sadly, as we all know, farmed animals, whether they are fish or any animals, don?t survive unless they are looked after.

The fish farmer added: ?We farm them in a sustainable way. The welfare of the fish is at the forefront of our minds. Isn?t it better to have farmed fish than to be pillaging the seas where stocks are declining dramatically??

Fish farms in Scotland, Kent and the South West have been attacked in the past year.

Misguided fools!

Bet it won't stop them doing it again though.

"Isn?t it better to have farmed fish than to be pillaging the seas where stocks are declining dramatically??

Remind me how halibut pellets are made?

Aren't they like rabbit pellets?

I think they are for feeding halibut, in the same way trout pellets are used to rear trout.

I may be completely wrong of course...

...but how many tonnes of halibut pellets are chucked into commercial (and non-commercial) fisheries each year? Seems you can't go fishing anywhere now that hasn't been filled in with the things. Our coarse fish may be getting fat on them but sooner or later we'll run out of sea fish to make 'em with - can we expect to start using surplus carp stocks instead?

Yes, they're for feeding halibut - and so far as I know - and I should be overjoyed to be corrected on this - they are made of fishmeal. So the pillage is transfered from halibut to sandeel, dolly varden or whatever. Does that make things better?
(I know somebody is making pellets from a sustainable, land-based source; if the halibut farmer in question was feeding these, then my cynicism is completely unfounded. In his case.)
I must also confess to hypocrisy - I use pellet if I have to - the difference is merely one of scale.

Unfortunately that's a very naive way of looking at it. You wouldn't be able to use pellets at all if they weren't mass produced for the fish farming industry in the first place. If criticism of the practice is justifiable then regrettably it must apply to all who use them, however infrequently.

And that includes me!

Alan, makes a very good point.The commercial over fishing of sandeels etc is having a major environmental impact on both sea and fish populations higher up the food chain.Witness the plight of starving Guillemots in the Orkneys highlighted recently.

As Alan points out, the aquaculture sector is looking into sustainable sources for food but I know from my brother who is a fish farmer who supplies Kames amongst others with Salmon Smolts, that it is very much in it's infancy due to cost and the very low margins fishfarms operate on - ?10 for a whole farmed salmon anyone?

There is no such thing a cheap lunch to paraphrase a little.

I would like to see the comparitive figures for pellets supplied to the coarse angling market and those to aqua culture.I suspect that the coarse market would only be a fraction.

Maybe we should all go back to using greaves although I am never quite sure what they were.Didn't the Trent Otter show you how to fish with them when you were a lad Ron?

No such thing as a free lunch? Farmed oysters come pretty close, they turn plankton and suspended crap - sorry, detritus, into clean, tasty protein!

Justa fort - are Zebra mussels edible?

Greaves was the fatty deposit left over from candle manufacture. Never used it myself...

Good point Alan and mussels as well of course.

The best Oysters I ever had came from a little oyster farm on the Beara Penisular in Cork fished from sea an hour before.Sublime!

Just an aside, but the fishing at Thorpe Park once went through the roof for pike once the ALF had been over and opened the trout pens.

You could catch 'doubles' so fat they weighed 20lb. Not that pike eat trout, of course, they prefer nibbling on little roach