Marine Harvest Scotland has purchased marine veteran Seahorse Aquaculture’s fleet of three boats — The Nitrox, David Andrews and Tie Venture 111 — and hired their crews and support staff, it has been learned.
“I am sure that their invaluable experience will lead to our new colleagues having a great opportunity to progress their careers within MHS,” Marine Harvest south-area manager, David MacGillivray, said in a statement.
Seahorse Aquaculture told SalmonBusiness that they’re still open for business to consult and assist other aquaculture players, including Marine Harvest.
“The main asset we have is (managing director) Colin Bell. He’s available on a consulting basis to help other aquaculture companies and projects,” said company director, Joyce Bell. She added that the company will no longer operate vessels of any kind and will stick to consulting on turnkey farming projects and aquaculture operations.
These vessels now belong to Marine Harvest Scotland:
The Nitrox
The main duties of this vessel will be the cleaning and disinfecting of farm sites after they go fallow then preparing them for the next generation: so, her main duties will be cage cleaning; removing old nets; removing sea-lice skirts; deploying new nets and new sea-lice skirts. If she has any spare time she will assist at treatments, harvests or general duties around the farm, MacGillivray stated.
David Andrews
“Being a tug, she will be doing a lot of work with her main role towing our flushing raft around farms thereby reducing our need to hire third party vessels,” he said, adding, “In between towing the flusher raft, she is also capable of towing barges and cages or other kinds of floating equipment.”
Tie Venture 111
The Tie Venture 111 will replace a contracted boat and become a service or site boat based in Lewis and Harris “to assist with the huge workload we have out there”.
“She is a very capable and versatile boat and along with her crew, will be a great asset for the Lewis and Harris team going forward.”
Seahorse Aquaculture’s assets have been based in the northwest Highlands salmon-producing areas since the early 80’s. The company is also known for complete cage installations, mooring installations and fish-farm start-up operations.
Some of those start-up operations have been abroad. They range from new cage arrays in Turkey and Zambia to seabass and barramundi farms in Libya and Malaysia.
