A NORWEGIAN company has drawn up plans for Britain’s first deep-sea salmon farm in waters east of Shetland, The Ferret can reveal, prompting concerns it is an “experiment in factory farming” that could damage the environment.
Offshore salmon farming involves raising fish at sea in submerged cages, several miles away from coastal areas. Modelled on oil platforms, these super-sized farms are bigger than inshore sites and more robust for deeper waters.
The new technology is viewed by supporters as a more sustainable form of fish production. But critics have described offshore farming as “factory farming of the sea” and super farms off Norway have suffered problems such as fish escapes which can impact the marine ecosystem.
The finding comes from government documents released under freedom of information law to The Ferret, along with plans leaked from Norwegian aquaculture giant SalMar. They show that the Shetland site, if sanctioned, would see three huge farms spread across an area several times the size of Lerwick – rearing more than five million fish.
Proposals for the project are already developed enough for Crown Estate Scotland to be considering specific co-ordinates for the farms. The plans have also been shared with the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency, Shetland Islands Council and the Scottish Government.
MSPs were told last month that while firms operating in Norway with links to Scotland are looking at offshore opportunities, no companies currently operating in Scotland are considering this.
Campaign group Animal Equality criticised what it described as a “veil of secrecy” over SalMar’s plans, while environmental charity Green Britain Foundation (GBF) said the aquaculture industry was demonstrating it “can’t be trusted”.
“They’re apparently planning massive offshore operations in Shetland waters,” said GBF’s founder Dale Vince. “We don’t need another experiment in factory farming, in a pristine environment, from an industry in pursuit of profit at any cost.”
SalMar did not respond to our request for a comment. Salmon Scotland – which represents salmon farmers – said it had no knowledge of any company plans to move immediately into offshore locations.
SalMar in Shetland
DURING a visit to Shetland in January, SalMar presented a plan to locals for three separate farms, each five kilometres apart and rearing 1.6 million fish apiece. The site’s total footprint would cover more than 25 square kilometres.
The plans said the super farm could bring dozens of jobs to Shetland. The scale of the project, however, has concerned local fishers.
“It will mean spatial squeeze inshore and offshore for us,” said Sheila Keith, of Shetland Fishermen’s Association. “I’m not convinced growth is always the best thing for industries in Shetland when we have finite space and parameters to work with. Is expansion the best thing for Shetland?”
SalMar presented its plans to a number of local stakeholders, including Yell community council at a public meeting. The community council declined to share the presentation with The Ferret but did volunteer emails from SalMar in which the company said: “We have chosen not to share any written material such as the presentation shared with you and would not like this to be shared with externals such as the media, please do not share it.”
The firm raised similar concerns with government officials. In emails discussing freedom of information requests, SalMar urged officials to withhold details and they agreed. “We will redact the specifics on [redacted] proposed and the more specific area of interest first identified, as well as the reference to [redacted] as previously discussed,” an official wrote to SalMar in March.
Shetland Islands Council rejected a similar freedom of information request for emails exchanged with SalMar – citing commercial sensitivities and intellectual property rights.
The council told The Ferret that it held “initial pre-application discussions on this matter”, but declined to comment further.
Holyrood vote this month
HOLYROOD will vote on whether to extend marine planning zones into offshore waters later this month, effectively opening up areas to applications for the new technology, as proposed by SalMar for Shetland.
At a meeting of the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee (RAIC) last month at Holyrood, Salmon Scotland reassured ministers that regulators would have ample time to develop the expertise to keep offshore farms in check, because companies would move “incrementally” into deeper waters.
“Companies at the moment have no direct, to my knowledge, plans to move immediately into [offshore] location[s],” said Iain Berrill,
Salmon Scotland’s head of technical. “We’re not going to rush straight to that area.”
Government documents show that SalMar has been discussing plans for a farm in Scotland with government officials for at least 18 months. As early as July 2024, Crown Estate Scotland asked SalMar’s holding company, Kverva, to provide co-ordinates to check for existing infrastructure like subsea cables in the area, or other developers who have expressed an interest.
Most of these documents – a heavily redacted combination of meeting agendas, minutes and emails – were omitted from the Government’s initial freedom of information response to The Ferret, but later released on review.
At last month’s RAIC Holyrood meeting, ministers were told the Government’s marine directorate did not have detailed information about the plans. When asked the next day about those plans, a government spokesperson said some of its communications with SalMar are “commercially sensitive”.
When giving his evidence to the RAIC, Salmon Scotland’s Berrill did acknowledge that Norwegian companies are already farming in offshore waters abroad.
“There are companies which have facilities in other countries, specifically Norway, which are in those [offshore] locations at the moment, and they have some links to our companies,” he said. “But at the moment those that are operating here are doing this in an incremental manner.”
Scottish Sea Farms (SSF), one of Salmon Scotland’s member companies operating in Shetland, is half owned by SalMar. The Government’s minutes show that SSF attended at least one of SalMar’s planning meetings with officials in June. At that meeting, SalMar agreed to begin sharing co-ordinates with Crown Estate Scotland.
Neither SalMar nor SSF responded to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Salmon Scotland confirmed Berrill’s evidence.
They said: “The evidence provided to the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee is accurate – while some Norwegian salmon farming companies have the capability to operate in more exposed offshore locations, none of the companies currently operating in Scotland are seeking to develop such farms at this time.”
Crown Estate Scotland’s director Mike Spain gave evidence alongside Berrill during last month’s committee meeting but did not mention SalMar’s plans. A spokesperson said: “If asked to do so, Crown Estate Scotland occasionally completes checks of the seabed for potential development conflicts as a matter of courtesy. The check is effectively a snapshot in time and does not infer any permissions or development rights.”
Holyrood is now expected to vote on opening up Scotland’s offshore waters to aquaculture applications on Wednesday, June 11, 2025. If passed, the measures would come into effect a week after on June 18.
By extending existing marine planning zones from three nautical miles out to 12, the ultimate consenting decision for offshore farms would still rest with local councils, as it currently does for inshore farms.
'There are a lot of unknowns'
OFFSHORE salmon farms – mostly in Norway – have a mixed track record.
While almost 16,000 fish escaped during SalMar’s first offshore trial in 2019, the company has claimed record low fish deaths in more recent rounds of production.
During the RAIC meeting last month, various experts described the technology as untested.
From fish health to the logistics of getting staff around the massive sites, the RSPCA told ministers “there are a lot of unknowns”.
The head of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation, Elspeth Macdonald, raised concerns about the overall environmental impact of offshore farms – such as fish escapes, the impact of offshore infrastructure or the volumes of fish excrement they might generate.
SalMar has now put its offshore plans in Norway “on hold”, according to its website, “due to regulatory uncertainty”.
If Holyrood passes the amendment later this month, SalMar is expected to begin its application for Britain’s first deep-sea salmon farm this summer.
That process would involve a pre-application consultation and public events in Shetland. A final application could then be submitted with Shetland Islands Council, which is responsible for putting the plans past national regulators.
