Look to the sea for top farms in the west

TO SEE intensive farming in the west of Ireland, look towards the sea, where last week’s announcement by Marine Harvest Ireland of plans to develop a new €3.5 million organic salmon farm site in Bantry Bay raised the profile of an industry which has been quietly but steadily advancing for over 30 years.

It now employs modern technology to farm on a scale unmatched even on land. At Marine Harvest’s four Munster sites, fish husbandry manager Abdon Ryan and about 20 workers oversee the farming of up to 600,000 salmon per site.

Ryan, based in West Cork but a native of Co Wexford, has been working in the fish farming industry since leaving college in 1989. His experience includes working in Connemara, going back to college in Scotland and working for two years in Norway, where he became a qualified commercial diver, and where he gathered much of the expertise that he applies to his job in Ireland.