New Species Moving Forward At Ardtoe – Fishupdate.com

LEADING scientists at Seafish’s aquaculture research unit have said that they expect the commercial rearing of new species to improve and accelerate significantly in the next few years.

Fishupdate.com was given a guided tour of Seafish’s facilities at Ardtoe in Ardnamurchan, where the authority’s development team is working on perfecting the cultivation of species such as cod, haddock and halibut.

After running a successful cod farming project between 1997 and 2000, the latest project at Ardtoe is testing the commercial viability of farming haddock. Tests are also taking place with halibut using photoperiod manipulation, with results expected later in the year.

Head of Aquaculture at Seafish, Malcolm Gillespie, said: “It’s still early days in many ways, but we would expect to see significant improvements in the process for rearing all these three species. In the time that it presently takes to get a cod up to three kilos, over the next three or four years, we could be able to get it up to nearer seven kilos.”

Aquaculutre research manager, Jim Treasurer, added: “There is a real buzz in the industry about cod and haddock at the moment and we are all very excited about it. I believe that you’ll see more cod, for instance, here at Ardtoe than you will anywhere else in Europe.”

To read much more on the visit to Ardtoe, see the August issue of Fish Farming Today