Marine pen fish farming: Charging changes

Requirement 

Collect monitoring data on levels of sea lice on wild sea trout. The data should be suitable for assessing spatial and temporal trends in lice levels, inferring level of likely impact to sea trout (i.e. presence of mobile lice stages) and increasing our understanding of any relationship with aquaculture production. It should be informed by outputs from spatially explicit predictive models of sea lice, and where possible contribute to model validation and refinement.

Scope 

Organising and planning surveys  

Designing schedule of monitoring (SEPA) 

• To cover a 3-year period, with annual review and amendment. 

• Approach to identify large scale trends and provide additional local scale information on high-risk systems.

• Monitoring sites included based on: 

  • Existing data to maintain time series and to use existing knowledge of feasible sampling sites. 

  • Latest understanding of sea lice risk from modelling. 

  • Geographic coverage. 

• Writing statement of requirements and procuring services (SEPA) 

• Arranging necessary permissions (Contractors): 

  • Marine Directorate licensing (where close to river mouths). 

  • Landowner permissions. 

  • Crown Estate (for Fyke traps). 

  • Maritime and Coastal Agency (fyke traps). 

  • NatureScot (SAC areas). 

Delivering monitoring 

Large scale relative trends will initially be assessed using seine netting sites from the existing network, with evolution of sites following availability of hindcast model.  

Current monitoring effort- since 2010, annual average is 20 sites (ranges from 13-32).  

New sites will also be required in the Northern Isles as a priority. Propose 8 sites annually. 

A catchment or individual system level approach will require additional monitoring above current levels to assess levels of variability and representativeness of specific sites. These sites will be chosen on the basis of predicted lice abundance from spatial model outputs, when hindcast models are available (2025). Best current estimate is 6 sites per system on average, spread across the 6 highest risk systems. Propose monitoring these on a 1-in-3 year cycle, requiring 12 sites per year.   

The most up to date SFCC/ FMS monitoring procedures for seine netting and fyke trapping should be followed to ensure data quality. Provision should also be made to include tissue sampling for potential future genetic stock identification of sea trout individuals.

Fyke trapping can provide better long term (3-4 week long) data at a site and should be considered as a potential method for assessing levels of temporal variability. It may also be the only way to monitor some sites.  It is much more expensive- c.£1k per day, and capital costs are £5k.  

Auditing of a selection of sites required, to be delivered by SEPA 

• Details and extent to be agreed but expected to be covered in part by existing fish ecology and EPO resource.  

• Appropriate expertise available in SEPA fish ecology team, plus additional training to be delivered by IMR through funded SLIPD project. 

Managing and analysing data (SEPA) 

Create suitable storage for data and ensure data flows from monitoring programme. 

Analyse, visualise and interpret data. 

Expert advice provided by stakeholder groups, especially SG Marine Directorate. 

Reporting (SEPA) 

Annual reporting assumed to be required. 

Creation and maintenance of a web-based reporting service, including spatial visualisation of data via Scotland Aquaculture website.