Dr. Paddy Gargan:

The trigger treatment levels were picked but have no relevance to wild fish. We would argue that in some particular locations, even if the trigger level of lice on the farm was maintained, one would still have a problem with wild fish.

Fish farms, from 500 tonnes to 2,000 tonnes, only need to maintain the lice level at a certain trigger. There is no relevance to the number of fish on the farm. We would argue that a large farm has more potential to produce lice even at the trigger level than a small farm and it has more potential to damage wild stocks. We have been calling for more than a decade that the level should apply to the whole bay and should not be breached, so that fish farming is not impacting on the local wild salmon and sea trout in the bay.