Salmon farms & marine space

The basic question

If an industrial salmon farm is placed on an active fishing ground:

• Who decides that the displacement is acceptable?
• What evidence is required?
• Who carries the economic loss?
• What compensation exists, if any?

In practice, the people most directly affected — local fishermen — often have the least leverage.

Marine space is not infinite

The inshore marine environment is a shared resource. It is used by:

• small inshore fishing boats
• whitefish, shellfish and creel fisheries
• navigation routes and safe anchorages
• aquaculture
• marine cables and infrastructure
• conservation designations and protected areas

The reality is that one use often excludes another. The system therefore needs a clear, defensible basis for deciding priorities.

What “co‑existence” means in practice

Co‑existence is often described in planning language as a matter of “balancing” interests. But a balance is only real if:

• the affected parties are treated as equal stakeholders
• the losses are recognised and quantified
• there is a mechanism for recompense
• decisions are revisited if the predicted impacts are wrong

If there is no mechanism for recompense, then the system is not balancing — it is simply transferring value from one group to another.

Why fishermen are uniquely exposed

A salmon farm is a fixed industrial site. A fishing boat is mobile. The planning system tends to treat this as meaning the boat can “go elsewhere”.

But fishing grounds are not interchangeable. Grounds differ by:

• species and season
• depth, tide, seabed type
• shelter and safety
• distance from port (fuel and time costs)

“Just move” is not a neutral request. It is an economic penalty.

The direction of travel in Shetland

Shetland’s aquaculture sector is no longer dominated by small local companies. Most of the original businesses have been bought out by large external corporations.

This matters because the system increasingly pits:

• locally owned boats and local crews
• against large, capitalised, corporate operators

The question is not whether aquaculture creates jobs. The question is whether Shetland is being asked to absorb the long‑term cost, while the long‑term value is extracted.

What would a fair system look like?

A fair and accountable system could include:

• exclusion mapping showing exactly what grounds are affected
• impact quantification (economic and operational)
• recompense where grounds are materially lost
• time‑limited consents with real review
• clear standards for navigation, waste, and disease risk

None of this is radical. It is what any responsible system would do when one industry displaces another.

Evidence

Supporting documents for this topic are stored in the TSNS Evidence Library. You can search by tags such as Sea, Cases, and Other.