The first ballan wrasse reared at Mowi’s Anglesey hatchery in Wales has been delivered to Mowi’s seawater farms. Around 40,000 wrasse have so far been introduced to pens at Loch Duich, Invasion Bay, Camus Glas and Loch Leven with more to follow.

“This is a significant step towards our aim of reducing the need to use wild-caught wrasse as cleaner fish in our farms. We are the first aquaculture company in Scotland to rear our own wrasse for use at our sites,” said Dougie Hunter, technical director and managing director of Ocean Matters. “The team at Anglesey has worked extremely hard to successfully rear the wrasse and have them ready to deploy at this stage. Feedback from our farms who have received the wrasse has been overwhelmingly positive so far.”

Ballan wrasse, which takes around 17 months to rear compared to eight months for lumpfish, will also be introduced to other farms over the next few weeks. By next year, it is hoped that Mowi Scotland’s farms will be fully supplied with wrasse from the hatchery.