Complete the morning water quality and feed round

What is going on

It is 6 am at the sea farm pontoon and you are on the feed boat with the leading hand for the morning round across twelve cages at lease site A. The round has three parts: water quality readings at one and five metres at every cage, feeding each cage to its plan while watching the response, and the mortality round. Yesterday cage 3 read 5.8 milligrams per litre of dissolved oxygen at depth, below the action level, and feeding was stopped there. Cage 12 is isolated for a suspected disease and must be fed last with no gear shared. You will take the readings, enter them in the log and record the feed and mortalities while the leading hand drives and supervises.

Your brief

Complete the round safely and correctly: calibrate the meter, take and record readings at every cage, apply the action levels, feed to the plan while observing response, complete the mortality round, respect the cage 12 isolation, and leave the log complete and accurate for the afternoon review.

Work through it

You do not need to do it all. Doing a few of these will show you what the work is like. Your ticks and notes stay on this device.

• Read the Water Quality Monitoring Procedure and the Stock Feeding and Handling Procedure and list the action levels for dissolved oxygen and the rules for stopping feed.
• Put on your personal flotation device, complete the boat pre-start with the leading hand and record any defect on the Incident and Hazard Report Form.
• Calibrate the multiparameter meter against the reference solution and record the calibration in the Farm Stock and Water Quality Log.
• Take dissolved oxygen, temperature and salinity readings at one and five metres at each cage, entering each reading in the log at the time with cage, depth and time.
• Apply the action levels: where a cage reads below six milligrams per litre, stop feeding that cage and tell the leading hand, and record the action in the log.
• Feed each cage to the feed plan, watching for the response to slow or pellets falling through, and record the amount fed and the response for every cage.
• Complete the mortality round, counting and recording morts by cage, noting any fish with visible signs, and feeding and handling cage 12 last with no shared gear under the isolation rule.
• Review your entries with the leading hand, flag any cage that is consistently lower than its neighbours and write a two line handover for the afternoon crew.

What someone in this role would produce

• A complete set of Farm Stock and Water Quality Log entries for the round
• A list of the action levels and the actions you took
• A mortality count by cage with observations
• A handover note for the afternoon crew