Two major Scottish salmon players have joined hands to deploy commercially farmed ballan wrasse, a seafish found in coastal waters, to fight problems of sealice.
The Scottish Salmon Company (SSC) and the Meridian Salmon Group, Morpol's UK operation, signed a three year agreement with Otter Ferry Seafish which will see over 250,000 wrasse used in marine sites.
Numbers will be split equally between the SSC and Meridian as the potential benefits of introducing the wrasse, or cleaner fish, for animal welfare and the marine environment will be studied.
While widely shown to reduce sea lice on salmon, this is one of the first full scale operations to farm and deploy wrasse in Scotland.
