VESSEL REVIEW | Burra Sound – Scottish Sea Farms acquires versatile fish pen maintenance boat

Scottish Sea Farms (SSF) has placed the 21-metre (69-foot) utility workboat Burra Sound into service at its Bring Head salmon farm in Orkney following delivery from Dutch builder Nauplius Workboats in the spring of 2026.

The vessel has a beam of eight metres (26 feet), and it will be used to handle the heavier infrastructure that came with the farm's move to larger pens in a deeper, more exposed location.

The vessel is the final element of an approximately £6 million (US$8 million) modernisation program at Bring Head that also included a 300-tonne feed barge with six feed lines.

Burra Sound is the third vessel Nauplius has built for SSF. It follows the workboat Sandoyne Lass, delivered in 2017, and the multi-support vessel Fair Isle. The new boat is based on the design of Fair Isle, though it is smaller in both length and beam.

Designed to support operator's shift to larger salmon pen sites offshore

The design brief was driven by conditions at Bring Head. SSF moved the farm slightly farther offshore into deeper water with stronger currents and has replaced its 80-metre (260-foot) pens with twelve 120-metre (390-foot) pens.

After the current production cycle, the company said it planned to install eight 160-metre (520-foot) pens, six of which would be stocked at any one time. The vessel was sized to work both configurations.

"We wanted to future-proof the vessel so that it can accommodate 160-metre pens, should we proceed with our company strategy of using fewer but larger pens," said Duane Coetzer, SSF's Orkney Regional Manager, when the order was announced. SSF's pre-build specification called for a 40-tonne payload, the ability to lift a 12-tonne sinker tube and greater self-sufficiency at the site.

The builder and supplier reported a payload exceeding 100 tonnes when crane operations were not involved, with more than 50 tonnes carried on deck when cranes were in use.

Layout facilitating ease of cage handling with less equipment

The deck crane is rated at 3,200 kg at 13.4 metres (44 feet) of outreach. Sinker-tube handling, however, is designed around winches rather than the crane. Bring Head uses nine-tonne sinker tubes to hold nets in shape against the tide, and the farm had previously been lifting these by crane.

Jeff Taylor, Bring Head Farm Manager, worked with Nauplius on the design.

"It's very tidal here so to keep the nets in place we use nine-tonne sinker tubes, which we have been lifting with a crane," he said. "This new boat is fitted with two tugger winches with leads running over the sides so we can lift the nets up directly through the lifting points on the cages. It is safer for the fish and the crew, and more cost effective than fitting winches on to each pen, and will allow us to treat and harvest in all weather conditions."

The winch arrangement lifts the Froya ring, the sinker tube that keeps the bottom of the net shaped and under tension, directly from the vessel.

"One of the more novel features of this boat is a winch system that enables us to lift the Froya ring directly through a winch on the vessel, instead of placing winches on the pens as we've done elsewhere," said Coetzer. "If we fitted winches to every pen, it would be a significant investment - around half a million pounds. While they are highly effective, this approach allows us to use a more conventional system, making the vessel adaptable for use at other sites with only minor modifications to the pens."

Ensuring reduced reliance on chartered platforms

For the 12-pen site, moving the winches onto the boat keeps the equipment portable between farms.

The second objective was to improve fleet utilisation. Ross Stevenson, SSF's Vessel and Infrastructure Manager, said the farm had been relying on hired vessels on busy days.

"It will improve costs greatly because there are days here when we've sometimes got two or three contract boats helping,” he said. “Now we'll be able to do most of that work ourselves with Burra Sound.”

The hull was built by SupTech Construction on behalf of Nauplius and launched in the Netherlands in November 2025 using the sheerleg crane vessel Matador. The hull was then moved to Nauplius's quay at Delfzijl for outfitting.

Propulsion and steering components came from two companies within the Blokland Group. Blokland Propulsion supplied the full shaft lines together with the rudders, while Current Motion supplied the tunnel thruster at the bow. Current Motion said the thruster is intended to provide accurate positioning and better control during harbor work, site operations and low-speed maneuvering.

Sea trials were completed in February 2026. Nauplius and Current Motion reported speeds of more than 10 knots, and the Blokland Group said the trials demonstrated strong manoeuvrability alongside the speed and payload figures.

Gerrit Knol, Technical Director and Naval Architect at Nauplius, said the yard had designed the boat around the site's conditions.

"Designed for demanding tidal environments and larger cage systems, the vessel will support the team at Bring Head in operating safely and efficiently with the farm's larger pen infrastructure," he said.