Salmon deaths on fish farms in Scotland nearly doubled last year, official figures show, owing to growing levels of disease, parasites and jellyfish blooms. Campaigners have blamed overcrowding and called for a boycott.

Fish Health Inspectorate (FHI) data shows that nearly 15m salmon mortalities were reported by farms in Scotland from January to November 2022, the latest data available, compared with 8.58m in all of 2021 and 5.81m in 2020.

Production of Atlantic salmon has been broadly stable at about 200,000 tonnes a year for the last four years, with some estimates that up to 77m fish are farmed annually.

Salmon farmers blamed the increase on unusually large numbers of micro-jellyfish that swarmed in British waters last year, a phenomenon that may be related to climate breakdown, but Abigail Penny, executive director of Animal Equality UK, said overcrowding in salmon farms was to blame.

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