A number of Northern Harvest Sea Farms (NHSF) employees were busy on Monday morning, October 22, in offloading one of the first shipments of smolt from the company’s hatchery in Stephenville to a boat in Harbour Breton.
The approximately 1 million smolt, ranging is size from 70 grams to 110 grams, will be used to stock the company’s new site at Murphy’s Point in Little Bay which is part of the Great Bay de l’Eau.
Shaun MacLeod, the manager of the NHSF Stephenville hatchery (Northern Harvest Smolt Ltd.) said that the smolt being delivered to the new site started off as eggs back in November 2011 of this year and are now ready to make the transition to salt water.
MacLeod said that the hatchery will be starting to raise 10 million eggs in November 2012 and, from these, the company will turn out anywhere from 4 to 4.5 million smolt next spring.
The NHSF Stephenville hatchery’s 16 full time and five part time employees hope to turn out between 4 and 4.5 million smolt on an annual basis.
Chris Williams, NHSF’s Marine Operations Manager, said that the company currently has 14 active sites in operation. The company has a number of other sites that are used on a rotational basis.
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