Current status: Answered by Mairi Gougeon on 20 March 2026
To ask the Scottish Government, in light of the September 2025 update to the fisheries persistent high mortality analysis confirming that the scope of that work is limited to marine sites, and in light of reports that the Applecross hatchery has recorded approximately 10 million fish deaths over the last four years, including close to half a million deaths in January 2026 alone, during which period the facility has received regulatory consent to expand its operations, what the rationale is for excluding freshwater sites, including hatcheries, from the persistent high mortality analysis, and whether it will commit to extending that work to include the freshwater and hatchery stages of production.
There are significantly fewer fresh water salmon production sites compared to marine sites, and associated available datasets on fresh water mortality are less extensive with higher variation within the data. Therefore, different analytical approaches are required for fresh water sites, and they could not be included in the original analysis of persistent elevated mortality on Scottish salmon farms. The Scottish Government prioritised marine sites for analysis as there are many more marine sites.
There are no immediate plans to extend this analytical work to include fresh water sites. The Fish Health Inspectorate (FHI) is made aware of all mortality events where mortality exceeds specified thresholds, as a result of a voluntary reporting mechanism which is in place. This includes fresh water sites; the FHI investigates mortality events as they occur.