SALMON may be the largest component in the Scottish aquaculture sector, but others – such as haddock, mackerel, crab, mussels, scallops and cram – have no less important a place in its structure.

The family-owned Shetland Mussels is a major producer of rope-grown mussels and has been around for 20 years growing, harvesting and packing more than 1000 tons of the mollusc for markets across the UK through the Scottish Shellfish Marketing Cooperative (SSMC).

It employs 17 people and is owned equally by Lollie Tait and his sons Michael and Richard.

The company has recently been working with the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC) in Stirling on a new hatchery, aiming to increase the production of mussels produced in the clear, clean and wild waters around the UK’s most northerly islands.

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Michael Tait, director and co-owner, told The National: “Most of our 19 members in the co-op farm mussels and the biggest technical challenge we face is having a reliable source of spat (baby mussels).

“We dangle ropes in the water at the right time of the year and hope for the best, and that’s got us as far as we have so far, so we’re producing 7500-8000 tonnes of mussels per year.”

He said the small businesses didn’t have the time or resources to interact with research on their wider challenges but managed to secure funding to look at addressing how to raise the level of spat.

“The project’s been running for a year and it has another season to go,” said Tait, who now chairs the project group.

“We’re half-way through and the people we’re working with can also provide expertise and bridge gaps between us and people we don’t necessarily know have expertise, so they keep us in touch with people like the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban, SAIC people in Stirling who are experts in their field.

“We adapt and find the project’s focussing on different areas from what we originally thought, and so far, it’s been more challenging that we thought.

“The results have been less successful that we hoped but we’re going into the second year with all these experts on tap and having a breather over the winter – our off season – we’ll hopefully do better in the second half of the project.

“We’ve had a bit of time over the winter to tweak the equipment and hopefully when we get up and running again now we’ll start to see some big steps forwards

“We know it is possible technically, but the quantities that we managed to get through the system were not what we need.

“The end result is if we can get a recipe that works in these pilot trials we’ll hopefully be able to spin out of that one or more commercial entities that could be able to supply these spat into our industry.”

Tait, who admits to being a great fan of scientists, added: “This is an example of when we’ve gone to the experts and said, ‘we’ve got this big problem’ and a lot of scientists are keen to get involved, but we’re really testing them this time.”