Sir James Ramsay-Gibson-Maitland, 4th Baronet was a Scottish aquaculturist who dedicated his life to experimenting on the practices of husbandry in fish. He gained recognition for his work by being awarded several diplomas.
was established in 1873, Maitland had previously been experimenting in another site; however, the site was prone to flooding which meant that Maitland and a team of men had to try and recapture the escaped Swiss trout. Howietoun was an ideal spot as it had a water supply from Lake Coulter and a steady supply of spring water also. Maitland believed that fish could be raised in a similar way as farm animals, in that animal husbandry could also be successful when applied to a fishery. Maitland's approach to experimentation was a scientific one; he would only change one variable during an experiment and then would hypothesise how the outcome had happened. This meant that he was able to work out that breeding young stock of fish gave a result of weak offspring; instead, he realised older stock must be used to gain strong offspring. He worked out that the female fish must be stripped of their eggs and male milt collected in October; he then worked on hatching boxes for the live ova. After the fry hatched, then they were transferred to rearing boxes before being transferred to plank ponds. Maitland was meticulous in writing up his experiments; this means that every change that he made in the diet, transport and selective breeding of the fish was documented. There are even pictures with measurements of the instruments Maitland was inventing to make rearing fish easier. Maitland also experimented on the diet of the trout and salmon at the fishery; he worked out that horse spleen when ingested by trout caused blindness and nutritional cataracts. He worked on several options before concluding that the best option for feeding trout and salmon was horsemeat, shellfish and eggs. One of his most important experiments was finding ways to transport large quantities of live ova, at the time live ova were sent in crammed packages and when they arrived most did not survive, Maitland took three attempts to work out how to insulate the cargo to stop fluctuations in temperature. Successful shipments were then sent to Wellington, Dunedin and Otago in the specially designed shipment boxes that Maitland had designed himself.
Awards
The work of Maitland at Howietoun fishery meant that he was awarded several diplomas in fish culture and two gold medals in 1883 and 1885, at the International Fisheries Exhibitions, Edinburgh.
Death and legacy
Maitland died on 9 November 1897, his daughter Mary Steel-Maitland and her husband Arthur Steel-Maitland took over the running of Howietoun. Howietoun Fishery was then amalgamated into the Northern Fisheries Company in 1914 before the Maitland family sold it in 1969. It became a part of the University of Stirling Aquaculture Institute in 1979. The majority of brown trout re-stocking in Scotland is achieved through the stock of Howietoun Fishery.
