The salmon farms and factories of Norway
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?
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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.