The salmon farms and factories of Norway

DW (English)

Salmon is the world’s most popular fish – but overfishing has diminished their numbers in the oceans. Experts in Norway are making an effort to make fish farms more sustainable. But is it possible to make production humane?

Transcript

00:00Northern Norway, above the Arctic Circle, is home to hundreds of rivers and fjords amid

00:07pristine nature.

00:09We're on our way to a gigantic fish farm.

00:12Norway is the world's biggest supplier of salmon, providing 50% of global production.

00:18The fish farm, operated by Nordlax, is located off the coast in the Barents Sea and has six

00:25breeding cages.

00:26It's the largest offshore fish farm in the world.

00:30It's 385 metres long, it's 50 metres wide and at peak production we have 10,000 tonnes

00:38of salmon here or 2.5 to 3 million salmon here at the same time.

00:44The nets extend 56 metres down into the sea.

00:48This facility avoids the chemicals commonly used elsewhere to protect the nets against

00:52the accumulation of organisms known as fouling.

00:56Here the nets are cleaned by robots.

01:00So we will now put the ROV into the water and then start cleaning the walls of the nets.

01:07The farm is run by six people working in two shifts.

01:11Each of the six breeding cages contains around 350,000 salmon.

01:15They're fitted with underwater cameras and most of the operational activities are done

01:19by remote control.

01:21But just how crowded are conditions for the fish?

01:26The limit is set by the government so you can only have at maximum 2.5% fish and 97.5%

01:34of water.

01:36We probably run at I would say 1.5% density at the cages but there should be good space

01:46for the fish.

01:49Salmon farms are controversial but the wild variety is now an endangered species with

01:54stocks having declined to record lows.

01:58The next stage of our trip takes us 1,000 kilometres back down the coast.

02:03Even here further south it's still light at midnight.

02:11We meet the spokesman for the Norwegian Salmon River Association who happens to be an avid

02:17fisher.

02:19But he has little hope of catching anything these days.

02:23Farm-raised salmon frequently escape from their cages and tanks, in the process themselves

02:27endangering wild populations living in rivers.

02:31When they mix their genes with the wild salmon they get offsprings that are not very suited

02:37for life in nature and so they easily die.

02:43First they grow fast and then they compete with the really wild salmon which don't grow

02:49so fast and then afterwards they die.

02:54There used to be over 2 million salmon in Norway's rivers.

02:58Today they number just 400,000.

03:03The fish farm we visited is one of 40 conventional facilities operated by Nordlax in the country's

03:08fjords.

03:09A major problem with aquacultures is contamination with parasites, among them salmon lice.

03:16In extreme cases they can cause mass deaths among their hosts and they're also transmitted

03:20to wild salmon.

03:22Salmon lice won't survive fresh water for a longer period so if you use fresh water

03:29for a couple of hours, we're doing 12 hours with fresh water, then the lice will die.

03:37Salmon live in both rivers and the sea and are safe from the lice in fresh water where

03:41the parasites cannot survive.

03:45State-of-the-art breeding facilities use AI-controlled robot lasers to identify the lice and they're

03:51programmed to ideally only hit the parasites, with several shots required for de-lousing.

03:58Salmon that are infested with lice and escape from their cage pose a threat to their wild

04:02counterparts and have to be reported to the authorities.

04:06We measure the escapes.

04:09So we caught 40 salmon in four years but we were able to catch 36 of them so in total

04:14we only have four salmon that we don't know where they are for the last few years.

04:20Infectious diseases like Morotella viscosa are another problem, which is why the fish

04:25are inoculated on conveyor belts like this one.

04:30The conditions of captivity, with several hundred thousand salmon in one tank, make

04:35the fish highly susceptible to disease.

04:39We run at mortality rates, I would say around 5%, four to six, over the last five years.

04:46But according to the Norwegian Veterinarians Institute, the average mortality rate across

04:51Norway is far higher, at 17%.

04:55That's due to infectious diseases, but especially the impact of anti-lice treatments on the

05:00fish's bodies.

05:02One of the main reasons is handling due to treatment against salmon lice.

05:09To remove salmon lice now entails a lot of treatment and that treatment is stressful

05:15for the fish and then they can, for instance, develop wounds afterwards.

05:20The supersized farm we first visited is located not in the fjords but in the open ocean.

05:25The cooler, fresher and moving water here apparently helps to reduce disease incidence

05:30and to wash away sediment and excrement more effectively.

05:33Plus, the anti-lice treatments used here are less harmful to the fish.

05:39The adult salmon are picked up at regular intervals by a transport ship.

05:44They're brought on board via flexible tubes before being counted.

05:48At the port of Stokmarknes, they're pumped into the slaughterhouse, still alive.

05:55After being stunned, the fish are cut and killed.

05:59The factory runs 16 hours per day, in that time processing 300 tons of salmon from the

06:04Nordlax farms.

06:08It's the 11th biggest salmon factory in the world and employs 70 people per shift.

06:15Some of the salmon are shipped to destinations around the world as whole fish.

06:23Sigurd Jakobsen is head of production here.

06:27This species here is around between 6-7 kilos and the farmers out of the ocean farms,

06:34they have probably spent around 18 months to get this fish the way it is today,

06:40so that I can slaughter it here in my place.

06:44The other fish have their heads and major bones removed by a special machine.

06:51The smaller, pin bones are then removed on a conveyor belt, largely automatically.

06:59The pin boning machine is taking the pin bones out, but the machine never does a perfect job,

07:05so we need to have operators that take the rest of the bones out.

07:10After being cut into portions, the resulting fillets are then sorted by a robot according to weight

07:15and grouped together for packaging.

07:18By 2023, Nordlax posted profits of almost 50 million euros.

07:22On a global scale, this is a multi-billion dollar industry.

07:26Demand for the fish remains on the up, but for all the cutting-edge facilities,

07:30better conditions and more investments in technology and medical research

07:34will be required to make salmon farming humane.

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