Catherine McManus said Mowi Ireland was working to empty pens after the 30-metre Rara Avis ran over a salmon pen at the Portlee Smolt site in County Mayo and came to rest inside another. The incident, which unfolded in the early hours, left 25 people on board without injuries reported.
McManus said the site held 100,000 post-smolts weighing an average of 500 grams, and that the next step was to move fish out before the yacht could be taken away. She said: “We have barges on standby to try and tow out this vessel out of this pen”.
Catherine McManus on Pen Recovery
McManus, Mowi Ireland’s operations director farming, said dive teams had inspected the pens and found the nets below the surface undamaged. The yacht still tore the walkway netting above the water and damaged bird netting as it crossed the first pen and ended up in the second.
Farm technicians had already repaired the walkway netting, and bird netting was being replaced. That left the two affected pens in different states: the underwater structure was intact, while the surface fittings needed repair before the vessel could be removed.
Rara Avis and Clare Island
The Rara Avis had already been linked to Clare Island, where some of the people on board had been taken and the rest were being ferried. The Inter Atlantic was expected to arrive at Clare Island at around 5.30 pm to begin loading the fish after the pens were emptied.
The sequence now was straightforward: remove the fish, bring the crew back to the yacht, and then attempt to tow it out of the pen. The unresolved point is how the 30-metre vessel crossed one salmon pen and lodged in another in the first place.
