Consider This from NPR - Deep inside a Norwegian fjord, a dream of farming salmon sustainably

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

If you eat salmon, there's a good chance that it comes from a salmon farm in Norway. The country has been farming salmon for over 50 years. The industry is touted as a key producer of sustainable, low carbon footprint protein. But there are still negative environmental impacts. Each year, an average of 200,000 farmed salmon escape from their open net pens and breed with wild salmon. Interbreeding with these escaped salmon passes on significant genetic changes to wild salmon, changes that make them less likely to survive in the wild. NPR's Rob Schmitz traveled the country's west coast, visiting fishing villages and fish farms to see how the growth of salmon farming is affecting the wild population. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

If you eat salmon, odds are that it comes from a salmon farm. These farms are typically massive cylindrical pens made from nylon netting, holding up to a few hundred thousand salmon each. Norway is the world's largest exporter of salmon. A fifth of the salmon that Americans eat comes from there. I recently had a chance to visit Norway's west coast. It's lined with jagged, steep fjords, fishing villages, and salmon farms. One of the best ways to see it all is by boat.

Jürgen Vengard manages to start his boat on the second try, and we skim across the calm 2,000 feet deep waters of Hodongasfjord. The Norwegian coastline is actually perfect for farming Atlantic salmon. So we have the optimal temperature, we have good oxygen levels, we have the right salinity. Wengard listens to Coast Guard alerts as he weaves the boat around islands. He also points out local oddities. And I've been told that in this very place, they used to burn witches 500 years ago.

The boat glides to a stop at a floating walkway surrounding two areas of open water 50 feet wide lined with yellow nylon netting. A salmon farm run by the company Lingelags. Vengard, who's worked much of his life on salmon farms, is a tour guide here. We have two pens with 15,000 in each which actually might sound a lot but on a regular sized fish farm they have one million salmon. Above this open water pen, a mechanical arm swivels in place, shooting out pellets of food. It prompts silver streaks in the water below, a feeding frenzy.

This pen is home for these Atlantic salmon from March to December. In those nine months, they grow to a weight between 10 and 15 pounds. And then they're taken to a processing plant where they're stunned before they're slaughtered, filleted, and exported around the world. But for now, they're here, eating and swimming. The only thing separating them from the open ocean of these fjords is the thin nylon net. We need to inspect it every single day and look for holes because we really don't want

the salmon to escape. Why, what happens if they escape? So even though this salmon comes from wild salmon originally, we don't want them to mix the genes and destroy the spawning places for the wild salmon. But according to industry experts, it's too late for that. Consider this. The Norwegian salmon industry is touted as a model of modern aquaculture.

But how sustainable is it? From NPR, I'm Rob Schmitz. We tell you why it matters. Join the NPR Politics you can make this journey while you're doing the dishes or driving your car. State of the World podcast from NPR. Vital international stories every day. You care about what's happening in the world. Let State of the World from NPR keep you informed. Each day we transport you to a different point on the globe and introduce you to the people living world events. We don't just tell you world news, we take you there. And you can make this journey

while you're doing the dishes or driving your car. State of the World podcast from NPR. Vital international stories every day. It's Consider This from NPR. Hundreds of miles east of the fjords in the capital Oslo, author Simon Sartre sits on a bench at his local park beside the raging waters of the Akerselva River, where wild salmon, he says, can sometimes be seen right in the middle of Norway's biggest city. Sartre says Norway's wild salmon population has been cut in half in the past two decades,

largely due to the impact of tens of millions of farmed salmon. These farmed salmon, they are made to be fat and slow and, you know, be effective for the industry. Sartre co-authored The New Fish, a book about Norway's farmed salmon. Each year, an average of 200,000 farmed salmon escape from their open net pens. And then, says Satre, they mate with Norway's remaining 500,000 wild salmon. When they mate with the wild salmon, also the wild salmon becomes slow and fat and easy to catch for predators.

Their offspring essentially become the Homer Simpsons of salmon, says Sartre. But there is a serious underbelly to this. Norway's wild salmon stock is rapidly dying out. A study this year by the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research and the Institute of Marine Research found that nearly a third of wild salmon in Norway have, quote, significant genetic changes due to interbreeding with escaped farmed salmon. But Sartre says there is a bigger problem with Norway's farmed salmon,

sea lice. They're tiny crustaceans that attach themselves to salmon, feed on them, and reproduce. These sea lice, they have lived for ages just on wild salmon swimming by. They attach to it. And then when you gather millions of big salmons in the fjords and the sea lice get into that. It's like a heaven for the sea lice.

In a four-year study ending in 2020, Norwegian scientists discovered that in the fjords of western Norway, mortality rates among farmed salmon from sea lice infestation reached more than 30 percent. Salmon farms use chemicals like pesticides to treat their fish, but scientists have discovered that sea lice have evolved to become resistant to the chemicals. But one salmon farmer says he has an answer to all of these problems. Back in the fjords of western Norway, Sondre Eide, the young third-generation CEO of his family company Eide Fjordbruk, navigates his boat through the rain to his salmon farm of the future. When we arrive, Eide points to a black cylinder barely sticking out of the water, surrounded by floating gangplanks.

It's the cap of what appears to be a tank. And how far down does this tank go? 72 meters. So this is like basically, if it would be on land, it would be the highest building on the west side of Norway. How many fish can that hold? Right now it has 200,000 fish. This is closed-pen salmon farming. No escaped salmon and no salmon lice. This is all about giving the optimal life for the fish inside.

And then, of course, when you take away the salmon lice, you have no lice treatment, so you don't have the handling. And that's responsible for 60-70% of all the mortality in the industry. So then you can focus on how can we create the best day for the fish. Ida and a team of his company's engineers put years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars into this closed pen, which circulates ocean water into it and keeps lice out. It also filters out salmon waste, a big contributor to rising nitrogen levels in the fjords. This waste creates biogas, which in turn creates energy. Ida is now working on using that energy to power this facility.

Ida's closed-loop project raises the question, why isn't the entire industry farming salmon this way? Ida says when he and his team looked for the technology to do this, it wasn't there. He had the money to try to create it, so he did it. For me, it's like it is the right thing to do, and I 100% believe it from the bottom of my heart, and I know my father would have done the same.

To underscore this push for sustainable salmon farming, Ida takes me by boat to an even bolder project that he's finished. Ida has built the world's largest floating art installation in this fjord. It's a reflective silver orb that looks like a UFO that has crash-landed into the ocean. Ida calls it the Salmon Eye, and once our boat arrives to a dock attached to it, we enter what looks like a sleek lair of a James Bond villain, but what is actually an education center about threats to the environment. I'm worried about the weather, the climate, the increasing temperature.

Visitors see images projected on the walls and floors about an environment in peril before participating in a role play about the sustainability of salmon farming. After that, those who've managed to secure a reservation for Aida's Michelin-starred restaurant upstairs partake in an 18-course tasting menu of sustainable seafood. We need 50% more food towards 2050, and we have used 50% of all usable land for food production. And then we have only used 2% of the calories coming from the ocean. But still, we don't know anything about the ocean. We know less about the ocean than we know about space. And somewhere in these vast, deep bodies of water, says Ida,

lies the answer to feeding the world sustainably. This episode was produced by Brianna Scott. It was edited by Tara Neal. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Rob Schmitz. These days, it can feel like the news is fighting for your attention. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Rob Schmitz. bringing you local, national, and global coverage. No paywalls, no profits, no nonsense. Download the NPR app in your app store today,

or you can go to npr.org slash app. From your car radio to your smart speaker, NPR meets you where you are in a lot of different ways. Now we're in your pocket. Download the NPR app today.