I am always amused when people looking to come into the mussel industry think it will be easy. After all, don't you just put a few ropes in the water and haul in a crop of black gold a year or two later? If only it was that simple! The reality is thatthere are many technical and biological hurdles to overcome in order to get a successful crop to market, year after year, any of which can throw financial forecasts into disarray. And that is without taking into account "curve balls", such as Covid-19 and Brexit, causing severe disruption to marketing plans.In taking our own mussel farm (www.offshoreshellfish.com) offshore, we have faced many such hurdles, and we still have a lot to learn about the dynamics of farming on a large scale, six miles out in the open sea. However, it has meant that we can grow acrop from spat to harvest, in just over one year, which is a big advantage when compared to our previous sites in Scotland, where it took between two to three years to achieve the same thing.
展开▼
