Deep in a Norwegian fjord, the dream of sustainable salmon farming

HARDANGERSFJORD, NORWAY – Jorgen Weingaard navigates around a rocky island in a fjord, his boat cutting through the still surface of the water, sending waves toward the shore of the silent forest. But here in the Hardangersfjord in western Norway, the water is still deep: more than 2,000 feet deep.

“The Norwegian coastline is perfect for Atlantic salmon farming,” Weingard says. “We have optimal temperatures. We have good oxygen levels. We have the right salinity and the water is always changing due to strong currents. It is very good for agriculture.”

Heading to one of the several salmon farms in Vanguard Fjord, known for their cylindrical pens made of nylon netting, some holding thousands of salmon below the surface of the Hardangerfjord.

Norway is the world's largest exporter of farmed salmon; More than one-fifth of the salmon consumed by Americans comes from the Nordic countries. And as Norway exports more salmon around the world, the industry has come under fire from environmental groups who say salmon farms are irreversibly affecting the pristine environment of Norway's fjords.

Vanguard's boat stops at a floating walkway surrounding two areas of open water, about 50 feet in diameter, lined with bright yellow nylon netting: a salmon farm operated by the company Lingalax. Weingard, who has worked on salmon farms most of his life, is a tour guide here.

“It's quite a small fish farm,” he says, getting out of his boat. “We have two pens with only 15,000 salmon in each. That may sound like a lot, but in a regular-sized fish farm they have a million salmon.”

Above these open water columns, a mechanical arm rotates in place, ejecting food pellets. This induces the silver lining in the water below: a feeding frenzy. The pens are home to these Atlantic salmon from March to December. During those nine months, the fish grow to between 10 and 15 pounds in weight and are then taken to a processing plant where they are shocked before being slaughtered, filleted and exported around the world.

But for now, here they are, eating and swimming, the only thing separating them from the open ocean is a thin nylon net.

“We have to inspect it every day and look for holes, because we really don't want the salmon to escape,” Weingard said, pointing to a television screen inside the Lingalax facility where the company is able to monitor the health of both. Whether the fish and the nets holding them are compromised in any way.

“We don't want them mixing with wild salmon,” Weingard continued. “So even though these salmon originally come from wild salmon, we don't want them mixing their genes and destroying wild salmon habitats.”

But according to many industry experts, it is too late for that.

Hundreds of miles east of the capital Oslo's fjords, author Simen Sätre sits on a bench in his local park beside the raging waters of the Akerselva River, where, he says, wild salmon can sometimes be seen right in the middle of Norway. largest city

“I've never fished myself, but sometimes you see people on the river and they report nice catches,” he said.

Saetre, who co-authored new fish, A book about Norway's salmon farming industry says Norway's wild salmon population has been cut in half over the past two decades largely due to the impact of millions of farmed salmon. Every year, an average of 200,000 farmed salmon escape from their open net pens, a significant number when you consider that there are an estimated 500,000 wild salmon left in the country, Setre said.

“These farmed salmon then go and swim up random rivers and then mate with wild salmon, and they deplete the wild salmon stock because these farmed salmon are made fatter and slower and are viable for industry,” says Saetre. “But when they mate with wild salmon, the wild salmon offspring become slower and fatter and easier for predators to catch.”

That's a big reason, says Saetre, why Norway's wild salmon stocks are dying so quickly. A study this year by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and the Institute of Marine Research found that about a third of wild salmon in Norway have undergone “significant genetic changes” due to interbreeding with escaped salmon. But Saetre says there's a bigger problem with Norway's farmed salmon: sea lice. They are tiny crustaceans that attach themselves to salmon, feed on them, and reproduce.

“These sea lice have lived in and attached to wild salmon swimming for eons,” says Saetre. “And then when you gather millions of big salmon in the fjords and the sea lice get into it, it's like heaven for the sea lice, and they grow and adapt.”

In a four-year study that ended in 2020, Norwegian scientists discovered that the mortality rate among farmed salmon from sea lice infestations in the fjords of western Norway reached more than 30%. Salmon farms use chemicals like pesticides to treat their fish, but scientists have discovered that sea lice are becoming resistant to the chemicals.

But one salmon farmer says he has a solution to all these problems.

On another stretch of the Hardangersfjord, Sondre Eide, third-generation CEO of his family's salmon farming company Eide Fjordbruck, sails his boat through the rain to what he calls his future salmon farm. When he arrives, Id points to a black cylinder just sticking out of the water, surrounded by floating gangplanks. Its cap looks like a tank.

“This tank goes down 72 meters. If it were on land, it would be the tallest building in the western part of Norway,” says Aid. “It has 200,000 fish.”

Eide says, it's closed pen salmon farming: no escaped salmon and no salmon lice.

“So it's about giving the best life for the fish inside,” Eide explains. “And then, of course, when you remove the salmon lice, you have no salmon treatment, so you have no management, and that's responsible for 60 to 70% of all deaths in the industry. So how do we get the best life for the fish instead of the next lice treatment. You can focus on what you can create.”

Eide and a team of engineers at his company put years of work and millions of dollars into this closed pen, which circulates seawater through it and keeps lice out. It also filters salmon waste – a major contributor to increased nitrogen levels in the fjords – carrying it through various tubes to a separate tank where it eventually produces biogas that can be used to power the facility. , Eide's next project.

Eide's closed loop farming system raises the question: Why doesn't the entire industry farm salmon this way? While Norway's government has been slow to explore this new technology, the government of Canada, another major salmon exporter, is phasing out open pens for its salmon farming industry to pressure companies to build pens like the one Ed engineered. Eide says when he and his team looked for the technology to accomplish this, it just wasn't there. He had the money to try to build it, he says, so he did.

“For me, it was the right thing to do, and I believe it 100% from the bottom of my heart,” Aid said. “I know my father would still do that today. My grandfather used to do the same, because times change and we have to change with them.”

To underscore this push for sustainable salmon farming, Eide climbs back into his boat and navigates it toward an even bolder project he's building: the world's largest floating art installation, just a 10-minute boat ride from his salmon farm. It is a reflective silver orb that looks like a UFO that has crashed into the ocean. Eide calls it Salmon Eye, and once our boat reaches a dock attached to it, we enter what looks like the sleek lair of a James Bond villain, but is actually an education center about threats to the environment.

Inside, visitors watch images projected onto the walls and floor while listening to stories about an endangered environment before playing a role-play about the sustainability of salmon farming. Afterwards, those who have secured a reservation for Eide's Michelin-star restaurant upstairs partake in an 18-course tasting menu of sustainable seafood.

“We need 50% more food by 2050,” Aid said. “And we have used 50% of all usable land for food production. And we've only used 2% of the calories that come from the ocean, and yet we know less about the ocean than we do about space.”

And somewhere in this vast, deep, body of water, Aid says, lies the answer to sustainably feeding the world.