Anti fish-farm protesters have revealed figures that “name and shame” the salmon farms that have shot 180 seals around the Scottish coast over the last two years.
The salmon farming industry, backed by the Scottish Government, wanted to keep the identities of individual fish farms secret, claiming the information was commercially sensitive and could lead to fish farms being attacked by protest groups.
But protesters lodged a freedom of information, and yesterday revealed the findings.
Scottish Sea Farms has been named as the company which killed the most seals in 2013 and 2014.
The Norwegian-owned company shot and killed 56 seals in the two-year period – almost a third (32%) of all seals killed by salmon farms in Scotland.
Shetland is the region with the largest death toll, where almost half, or 49%, of all seals shot by salmon farms in Scotland are killed. This is followed by Orkney with 15%, Argyll and Bute, 14%, Highland, 11%, and the Outer Hebrides, 11%.
Fish farmers say they have to shot the seals to prevent them attacking the nets and stealing fish.
Campaigners say they should use stronger nets and seal scaring measures instead.
The Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture (GAAIA) is now writing to supermarkets urging a boycott of seal-shooting salmon farms, and to the US Department of Commerce suggesting a ban on imports, as well as threatening protests.
Don Staniford, GAAIA director, said: “Scottish salmon is dripping with the blood of dozens of seals.”
He claimed that many of the seal carcasses were not recovered or collected for analysis, adding: “The gory image of zombie seal corpses stagnating with gaping bullet wounds is hardly an appealing advert for tourism in Scotland.”
Scottish Sea Farms was unavailable for comment yesterday.
Scott Landsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation, said the number of seals shot by salmon farmers was falling year on year. The 80 seals shot by salmon farms in 2014 were from a total population of 148,000, he said.
He added: “The Scottish Government licenses fishermen, netting stations and fish farmers to shoot seals to protect fish in the event that other methods to deter them are unsuccessful. A very small number of seals can be persistent killers, resulting in the slow and painful deaths of thousands of fish.”
The Scottish Government said the number of seals shot by salmon farms decreased 66% between 2011 and 2014 and that shooting seals is a last resort.