Boats and Barges: 2024 in review

The contract has gone to the Norwegian company Eidsvaag although it is understood the vessels will be built in Bilbao, Spain.

Working with boats at sea is always intrinsically dangerous. The death of Clive Hendry, a Mowi employee who was crushed, then drowned in an accident involving a workboat and a feed barge in 2020, led to Mowi being fined £800,000 for workplace safety breaches.

A Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) in June this year determined that “there are precautions that could reasonably been taken that might realistically have resulted in the death, or accident resulting in the death, being avoided.”

These included, the Sheriff said, carrying out a specific risk assessment for the transfer from boat to barge, and a safe system of work for such transfers.

Hendry’s partner of 25 years, Catriona Lockhart, said afterwards that she was disappointed the FAI had not gone further. She said: “I feel this will happen again… nothing has changed.”

A milestone for Scotland
In August we reported that aquaculture services business Inverlussa had acquired its first wellboat. The vessel, which has been renamed Isaac McKinnon, will be working with salmon producer Mowi on the west coast of Scotland.

Inverlussa already operates workboats for the salmon industry, and the addition of the company’s first wellboat will bring its total fleet to 22.

The Isaac McKinnon has a length of 57m and a well capacity of 1050m3. It was purchased on June 3, 2024, and spent the following weeks in drydock at Aas Mek Shipyard in Norway, where it was originally built.

Ben Wilson, Inverlussa’s Managing Director, said: “This is a very exciting time for the company. Despite it being a natural progression from our current operations, it is still a big step forward for us.”

Throughout July and August, contractors were struggling to recover a Scottish Sea Farms’ landing craft, the Julie-Anne, that sank in July while moored off the Fiunary salmon farm in the Sound of Mull. The company said a small fuel leak had been contained.

Efforts to raise the vessel using lift bags proved unsuccessful. Eventually a specialist crane vessel – the Lara 1 – with the capacity to lift the Julie Anne directly, was deployed, and the sunken craft was raised on 29 August.

In October, Norway’s rapidly growing cod farming industry received its first dedicated wellboat in what has been seen as an historic event, a unique collaboration between the two local companies, Ode, and the wellboat company Sølvtrans.

Ronja Ode is the world’s first dedicated wellboat for transporting farmed cod and represents a significant step forward in the development of the cod farming industry, the two companies said.