Sunken fish farm boat lifted from seabed

A boat that sank in the Sound of Mull last month has been raised from the seabed.

The landing craft Julie Anne, operated by Scottish Sea Farms, went down on 4 July near the company's Fiunary salmon farming site off the Ardnamurchan coast.

An earlier attempt to recover the boat on 21 July was unsuccessful.

Scottish Sea Farms said a specialist crane vessel was brought in to lift the landing craft.

The company said Julie Anne would be taken to a safe location for an investigation into what caused the sinking.

The recovery operation was approved by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

Scottish Sea Farms said about 200 litres of diesel fuel was lost over the last eight weeks.

Following the sinking, a containment boom was put in place to seal off leaking fuel.

The company said there was an isolated incident on 21July when the boom failed resulting in the spread of diesel sheen.

It said additional measures were put in place.

Scottish Sea Farms' Gerry McCormick said specialist contractors were able to retrieve the vast majority of the fuel on-board, recover the vessel from the seabed and remove the risk of any further small leaks.

He added: "Even just one litre of fuel lost to the sea is, however, one litre too many, and our primary focus now is identifying the root cause of the vessel sinking."