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Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences
- magicalhippo 2mo agoFull title: Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences
- 8100000000 2mo ago[dead]
- actionfromafar 2mo agoMaybe this is the future https://www.science.org/content/article/oceans-away-raising-salmon-land-next-big-thing-farming-fish https://www.science.org/content/article/oceans-away-raising-...
- bjelkeman-again 2mo agoTechnically it works. Superior Fresh, as in the linked article, has a viable system. The challenge is that in the beginning it is hard to reach a scale that works economically. Added to that, in Norway it is challenging to grow leafy greens in greenhouses in the winter, compared to the latitude where Superior Fresh is located. It can be done, but is energy intensive. We ran a fully indoor pilot facility for five years in Sweden, it is still operational, under a new team. My ambition is to document what we learned in a CC licensed book. At the moment it is partially documented in a blog. https://cirkularodling.se/build-an-aquaponic-indoor-farm-part-1-start-and-prior-knowledge/ https://cirkularodling.se/build-an-aquaponic-indoor-farm-par...
- cassepipe 2mo agoThe article does not mention land-based fish farms but instead the "egg", a more enclosed pen that is underwater but estimate that it is 10 times the cost of a pen. How would a land-based fish farm would compare economically to those innovative underwater sea pens in your seemingly educated opinion ?
- bjelkeman-again 2mo agoI have an acquaintance that works as a consultant on one of the ”egg” (closed or semi closed) floating fish farms. I also know a professor who thinks they are going to be much more viable from an energy point of view. Personally I think they will have a big challenge economically until we start charging for the externalities of the open pen systems. Much like a carbon tax.
- Depurator 2mo agoA lot of interesting tech is being developed in salmon farming, and e.g. AI has been around for a long time. The north star is offshore farming in giant autonomus constructions far out at sea. Though problem but worth solving
- beggi 2mo agoIs it though - I feel like the north star is on land farming. So many benefits. Offshore farming will exacerbate farmed salmon escaping and polluting wild salmon + parasites etc (land farmed salmon can generally be eaten raw or under cooked without being frozen without any worries)
- pletnes 2mo agoThere seems to be few offshore production facilities compared to on-land ones.
- matchbok3 2mo agoSome of these farms are truly impressive. Although balancing the health of the fjords is hard. People seem to prefer "wild" salmon but just like we don't eat "wild" cow anymore, I imagine in 30+ years it will be the norm. Hopefully we can shift to that norm in an environmentally friendly way.
- throwup238 2mo agoWe don’t eat wild cows anymore because aurochs went extinct in the last few hundred years. People still eat junglefowl (ancestor of chickens) and wild boar (pig), but in the developed world domesticated animals are usually both cheaper and tastier.
- rf15 2mo agoAddendum: People will probably read that as "au-rochs" (and wikipedia's IPA sure isn't helping here), but it's actually split "aur-ochs". (that latter part being the foundation for the current word 'ox') Source: studied german enough to recognise that word root
- giglamesh 2mo agoLike ur ox as in primitive or original ox?
- syoc 2mo agoStrange to have an article about salmon farming drawbacks without mentioning escaped salmons polluting the wild salmon population. There has been a strong decrease in wild salmon as they lose the ability to migrate back up the river to lay their eggs due to breeding with escaped farming salmon.
- obelos 2mo agoThat is... unintuitive. Wouldn't the escaped salmon have to be able to get back upstream enough to where the wild salmon are laying/milting?
- mmaunder 2mo agoThey’ve bred more docile salmon, according to the article. Getting that DNA into wild populations would be problematic I’d imagine.
- fragmede 2mo agoIf those salmon are too docile, just give them cocaine. https://www.science.org/content/article/cocaine-pollution-gives-salmon-wanderlust https://www.science.org/content/article/cocaine-pollution-gi...
- dessimus 2mo agoHollywood is ready to run the gamut of cocaine-fueled fauna.
- LoveMortuus 2mo ago>docile salmon Hmm… that made me think of domestication, do you think we could ever have salmon as pets? What’s their character like? More like dogs or cats?
- Animats 2mo agoThat's surprisingly easy. It's been done for chickens. All that was necessary was to put groups of chickens in cages, and keep only the cage groups that were the best egg-layers. After only a few generations, chicken-on-chicken violence was way down.
- Epa095 2mo agoIt's interesting to see the power of wealth up close. For one the massive lobbying against any tax on the usage of the fjords(or on the wealth). But there is also cases where they will hire retired professors in tangentially related fields (like sea urchins) to write "scientific reports" "showing" whatever they want, which they then send to individual local MPs to convince them to allow more farming.
- altacc 2mo agoThe statement from the lobbying group is a classic example of PR deny, deflect, distract, confuse. The statement is basically "we're not the cause of the problem but if there were a problem we're doing everything we legally should so it's not our fault but we're also working to reduce this theoretical problem, which of course does not exist and isn't our fault". The effects of salmon fishing in Norway aren't limited to the local communities, it influences the whole area, back to the county government. Politicians lose a lot of support if they go against the money because despite driving our electric cars to our cabins and loving going to walks in nature, us living in Norway really, really like the good life and don't want anything to impact that. (To be fair, this also applies to the majority of the planet's population.)
- bronlund 2mo agoI live in Norway and me and my family do not eat farmed fish - for multiple reasons; political, ecological, animal cruelty etc. A hamburger probably has a better nutritional value than farmed salmon. Children and pregnant women should also limit the intake because it can disrupt development. And the color is fake, if they do not add coloring to the feed, farmed salmon would be gray. I could go on the whole day about this stuff. The whole thing is just sad.
- onesandofgrain 2mo agoAstaxanthin for the color fair. What about the salmon is bad for pregnant women?
- bronlund 2mo agoGrowth hormones. It’s better now than some years ago, but still. Some claim the do not use them at all. And they use a lot of antibiotics. And there is some accumulation of dioxins and PCBs in the fat due to the feed, but this has also been approved somewhat.
- ksec 2mo ago>Some claim the do not use them at all. It is against the law in most if not all EU countries. It is also the dispute between US and EU agriculture trade.
- throw-qqqqq 2mo agoFWIW, Norway is not a member of the EU - if that is what you are implying. If that is not your point, I apologize, but then I don’t see the connection (maybe you could elaborate?)
- masfuerte 2mo agoBut Norway is part of the EEA and is therefore bound by many EU regulations.
- mmaunder 2mo agoSalmon feed lots, with a similar problem of concentrated waste, cruelty and unhealthy animals. Sounds like the underwater egg solution they discuss in the article might also be solving an optics issue they have. Out of sight, out of mind.
- aassddddssaa 2mo agoTwo salmons can feed 5000 men. At least that’s the belief 20% of the US population has.
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- concrete_head 2mo agoI think you meant tuna not salmon. A large tuna can be 100's of kilograms, whereas a large salmon you are lucky if there is 10kg of edible meat
- epolanski 2mo agoWould not feed it to my worst enemy.
- fsuts 2mo agoComes down to finances ultimately? If can afford wild then get wild, otherwise farmed is cheaper. No different to farmed animals or non organic crops. All three are maximised for growth rate and revenue
- ksec 2mo ago1. The Title should be "Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences". It fits the character limit, why change it? 2. A lot of the conditions for Salmon farming can be drastically improved or completely eliminated if they have done it further away in deep sea rather than coast. It just cost more. 3. China is rapidly improving their Salmon Farming so there isn't much to worry about for Norway. In 10 - 20 years time half of it will be gone.
- stymaar 2mo agoPoints 2 and 3 kind of contradict themselves though, as China doesn't have access to deep sea (at least until the invasion of Taiwan or if China manage to take control of their claimed share of South China Sea).
- ksec 2mo agoThey are doing both landlocked and mobile deep-sea methods farming with success. In typical Chinese fashion as they have done with Fruit and other food productions, I wouldn't be surprised if they could scale it 10x within 5 years. I doubt it will take away Norway's supply to Japan in the short term due to quality and trust issues. But export to China may be lowered.
- wefzyn 2mo agoChina has the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet, and Chinese vessels fish far beyond China's coastal waters like in South America, West Africa, Indian Ocean.
- reco98gg 2mo agoI am surprised by the statement "Today, salmon sushi is a staple of Japanese cuisine" While in Japan a few years ago, I found no salmon on the menu in sushi places. When inquiring why, we were told that salmon is not that good, and that is more a food for kids than adults. Did it change or are we just one data point?
- tecleandor 2mo agoI'm trying to recall right now, and maybe the only places where I didn't find salmon in any of my visits was in the more expensive/ fine dinning places (think ¥8000+ places). All the common kaiten sushi places, or chains like SushiZanmai have all kinds of salmon pieces. Different levels of fat, broiled, rolls... Is it maybe a bit more like "comfort food", for kids, for less delicate palates, cheaper? Maybe. But truth is I haven't asked why I haven't seen it in the expensive places.
- dfxm12 2mo agoIt's hard to say, depending on how far back your idea of "a few years ago" might be or where exactly you ate. After all, Japan has a lot of sushi restaurants and even different sushi styles. For example, you definitely wouldn't find salmon in an edomae sushi restaurant. For reference, salmon was the most popular choice in conveyor belt sushi places 3 years ago. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01627/ https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01627/
- tecleandor 2mo agoAh, interesting stats, specially the second part when they say what type of sushi they refrain from eating. I guess that ōtoro and chūtoro is due to price. And uni... Maybe because of the flavor? It can be a bit of an acquired taste...
- ramchip 2mo agoI think most people like uni, but it's also one of the most expensive sushi you can get at kaitenzushi
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- petterroea 2mo agoThere have been critical articles about the lice problem in Norwegian newspapers for years, so it's honestly relieving to finally see it talked about abroad. I've felt shameful whenever people talk about the "superior Norwegian salmon". Hopefully international attention is what it takes for change to meaningfully happen beyond some R&D.
- teytra 2mo agoSolvable by using lasers! Not "sharks with lasers" but "Stingray Laser system" https://www.kvaroyarctic.com/the-stingray-laser-system-the-star-wars-laser-in-aquaculture https://www.kvaroyarctic.com/the-stingray-laser-system-the-s... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6sGkVQUvW20 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/6sGkVQUvW20
- pvaldes 2mo agoThis other problem is partially solved.
- gramie 2mo agoRecently there has been a push to farm "dry-land" salmon. In other words, the salmon live in large tanks on land, rather than in pens in the sea. At the moment a company is trying to start one of these close to me. Some local people are opposed, some are supportive, but most just want more objective study and information (i.e. not performed/paid for by the company itself). The devil may be in the implementation, but it certainly has some big advantages over the coastal pens.
- concrete_head 2mo agoI'm no expert but that seems like it could be very energy intensive. All the systems to maintain water quality, temperature. Not to mention the problems that arise having fish in such high density. There are other places in the world that farm salmon at a much lower density which helps in terms of disease and bioload on the environment. There's a company in New Zealand attempting to build open ocean fish pens, they might already have a prototype out already can't remember. Different species of salmon though.
- gramie 2mo agoEnergy may not be so much of an issue here in Quebec, where electricity is USD$0.05/kWh (residential rate) and 99%+ of it comes from hydroelectric power.
- SenHeng 2mo agoNagano, Japan does land farming of salmon. It's a landlocked state far from any coast so the farming is done in inland rivers and lakes. It's a crossbreed of rainbow trout and brown trout that produces a sterile hybrid called Shinshu Salmon so I don't know if it's actually real salmon, but it tastes like the same thing. https://www.pref.nagano.lg.jp/suisan/jisseki/salmon/english.html https://www.pref.nagano.lg.jp/suisan/jisseki/salmon/english....
- freedom_dev 2mo ago"Sushi has been consumed in Japan for more than 1,000 years but the Japanese had historically preferred tuna, seeing raw salmon as parasite-ridden and unpleasant to the palette. " English isn't my first language and even I know "palette" is wrong. Is it normal for official news outlets to write stuff like this?
- Etheryte 2mo agoI'm sure you've never made a typo or mixed up two similar words before.
- whyenot 2mo agoMaybe they are painting the fish and find the experience unenjoyable? :)
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- gtowey 2mo agoI'm a native English speaker and before your comment, I never noticed that palette, pallet, and palate are different words!
- Ylpertnodi 2mo agoComprehensive, or Grammar?
- dfxm12 2mo agoNo. Sometimes the spill checker just auto co-wrecks people.
- thrill 2mo agoauto-erotics ... it was sitting right there.
- dwightgunning 2mo agoPerhaps a happy accident.
- MichaelMoser123 2mo agoI think this is a veiled advertisement for Norway. Half of the world is engulfed in wars and terror (half across the road towards Mad Max), however Norway is worrying about the environmental effect of salmon feces on its fjords.
- protocolture 2mo agoEh foreign correspondent stuff like this tends to release at the end of a long pipeline. They spent 12 months on a piece on Israel that was focusing on the conditions of Palestinians near Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and it dropped a couple weeks after October 7, you could tell that they were pissed that it wasn't about Gaza, but were still happy to be in roughly the correct ballpark. There other arm, 4Corners, did a piece about a big government construction project and IIRC there was a different prime minister when it released vs when they started the investigation.
- YarickR2 2mo ago>seeing raw salmon as parasite-ridden and unpleasant to the palette. Painting with salmon is a .. novel take on the art of food.
- cassepipe 2mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_multi-trophic_aquaculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_multi-trophic_aquac...
- medv 2mo ago> killed and slaughtered then you see this kind of language you know what this article gonna be is about
- nope1000 2mo agoCambridge dictionary defines slaughtering as > the killing of animals for meat So I guess "killed and slaughtered" would be redundant but not wrong.
- emil-lp 2mo agoWhat it's going to be about, then?
- SiempreViernes 2mo agoBy the time you get to that phrase you are way past the middle of the article, so the fact you've read almost the entire article is probably the reason you know that it is about.
- DoctorOetker 2mo agowhich salmon organs would contain most of say the heavy metals? they could be selectively cut out, and any below-regulation levels sold (domestically and abroad) can be seen as a free heavy metal remediation effort in those bays and fjords. Making a closed loop system possibly including IMTA either on land (why not right at the salmon processing facilities saving transport costs and assets like boats, its cheaper to have no vehicle to maintain) or in water like the "Eggs" described in the article sounds like a no-brainer for the industry, who cares about 10x capex when the bottleneck is not capex but bureaucracy to get expansion permits? Once you realize capex is not the bottleneck (you can reuse the new system), it allows a lot of other costs to be eliminated, like disease and parasites: commingling fish with expensive health monitoring and management at density ρ can be replaced with smaller cells, each cell their intake and exhaust tubing, and the reservoir contact rate falls precipitously for the same density ρ: is the switchover investment more expensive than the current system? yes, but growth isn't limited by capex. This switchover would be desirable (true damage like the harmful fish feces concentration is prevented; false damage like bioaccumulating harmful heavy metals inserted by other human activities becomes none of the fish farmer's problems at all). The taxation excuses will dry up.
- ionwake 2mo agoDid you use AI for this. What on earth are you going on about? My first suspicion was when you started taking about metals. Bro salmon are euryhaline. You have no idea if its viable and profitable to remove certain organs, and its based on the incorrect premise that the fish have the metals in them, the ONE type of fish that has the lowest concentration of metals in existence. You literally picked the worst possible , weakest possible argument that could have existed, somehow defying all odds, ( which tbh is an achievement in itself) before your apparent non coherent jargon laden word ramble. I need my coffee now.
- giov4 2mo agowhere do you see AI input? for everybody, euryhaline: "Euryhaline organisms are able to adapt to a wide range of salinities." how is that related to the heavy metals? and what's the reason behind attacking the post topic based on that? osmoregulation anything to do with it or what? I still find the post useful and interesting, and I took organ modification as a possible threat to hiding toxicity instead. It would have been more useful to explain why and make it clear for us too if thats hyped, instead of just bro'ing around :)
- giov4 2mo agofunny, I tried to tell people and share with them about this salmon farming problem since many years, including quality, pollution, diseases and industrial feeding. It is important to be aware of this and dont abuse salmon eating since imho some kind of risk is there, beside the negativity of its farming! There are many documentaries online that show the core farming problem, it is interesting to see based on the article that this problems are becoming bigger and bigger and beside the lobbying hopefully there will be investments to solve it. I'm surprised that a country like Norway and Norwegian people allow such abuse of the fjords and of the animal... but yeah I guess always same story, work for people, business, lobbying etc. if its oil, fish pig or cow the game is the same. awareness is the first step, change is what is needed!
- moomoo11 2mo agowhy don’t we just infuse tofu with all the nutrients and eat that? hell i would pay for that. high protein extra firm tofu is like 2.70/lb for me. i get about 35g protein from 8oz of that tofu. i eat salmon 2x a week but most of my diet is tofu and beans/lentils for protein. i think it would be far ecologically and financially better to have tofu enhanced, so it meets nutritional needs at low cost. and i personally find tofu a lot more flexible than any other food.
- wasfgwp 2mo agoBecause it’s not very tasty? Also hoper processed foods “infused” with nutrients don’t sound very appealing.. Most people (in western countries at least) don’t really optimize their food in take this way or want to maximize the amount of protein per $
- moomoo11 2mo agotrue i mean i do think most people don’t care at all about climate change or the environment. i also dont care for most people besides those i love family and friends, or people like employees or colleagues. animal ag is a huge climate factor there plus we destroy ecosystems to murder the ocean floor. ultimately i don’t eat meat bc of the climat aspect (and it’s better for my health i want to live long) but since people don’t care i have zero problems with private jets or driving a F350 or sports car that gets 8mpg if people won’t do what’s right they deserve to deal with the consequences, and i’m not gonna shed a single tear because it isn’t my problem. i’ll just move somewhere nicer (SF is amazing, and during a fire i’ll just fly somewhere else)
- timonoko 2mo agoThere is something fishy happening in Norway. Some Lapps suggested not to eat fish south of Nordkapp-island. Because of fish farms. Insane, because this strait has always heavy current and nasty mælstrøms as half of Atlantic goes that way to east and back daily.
- yondys 2mo agoIt's encouraging that even the powerful lobbyists in Norway are discussing the effects their field has in the environment: > Krister Hoaas from the industry lobby group says that Norway is pursuing sustainable growth. >"We have to have growth within the limits that nature can cope with in a good way, and that would imply introduction of a lot of different production methods," Hoaas says. I like to see how much more nuanced and reasonable the discussions between opposing parties are in the Nordic countries when compared to most of the rest of the world.
- LilBytes 2mo agoUnfortunately it's not the norm, and is instead a great, and positive example of an outlier. Corpo speak globally is a lot closer to the opposite of what you quoted. The US, Australia (gas, mining and energy companies are core examples) and for the larger part Europe (e.g., Volkswagen) effortless say everything and nothing at the same time.