When you meet Alastair Barge, the owner and managing director of Otter Ferry Seafish Ltd, he seems very calm and relaxed with a twinkle in his eye, not what you’d expect from someone at the helm of a very ‘tricky’ business – the breeding and rearing of the world’s largest flat fish (15 feet long, weight 300kg). The hatchery on the shore of Loch Fyne in Argyll is the only one in Scotland and one of five in the world – the others are in Norway and Canada.
Otter Ferry Seafish Ltd is one of the longest-established aquaculture businesses in the UK. It was originally founded as a trout farm in 1967 by Alastair’s father, Ronald, and Ian McCrone. They went on to pioneer land-based salmon culture by pumping clean seawater into large tanks on the shore, producing 10% of Scotland’s salmon. However, when the salmon farming industry really took off in the 1980s with high investment and mass production in sea cages, the small, family-run company couldn’t compete and had to diversify.
