Norway Again Tries to Raise Fish Species at Risk on Farms

Norway is relaunching an effort to farm cod in the North Atlantic.

An earlier effort to set up cod farms resulted with fish escaping and
their failure to thrive in the cold icy waters. Norway hoped to become the
first country to try large-scale breeding of a species that was decreasing
in the wild.
A small group of companies raising Atlantic cod in Norwegian waters
say they have learned from the success of the country’s salmon business.
They also say they have learned from the failure of earlier efforts to farm
cod.
Wild Atlantic cod are having an uneven recovery. The number of cod
living near Iceland and in the Barents Sea are considered sustainable. But
those off Canada, the United States, Ireland and Britain are low. So are cod
stocks in the Baltic Sea and other parts of the North Sea.
Norcod is the biggest of the new cod farms. It is raising 1.8 million fish
along the Norwegian seacoast. The company plans to begin sales in 2021.
“We are targeting northern and western Europe first,” said Christian
Riber, Norcod’s commercial director. He added that the company has
also seen interest in their product from U.S. buyers.
Norcod aims to produce 6,500 tons in 2021, rising to 25,000 tons in
2025. That would be greater than the high reported in official records in
2010 before the industry collapsed.
There were many problems with Norway’s earlier efforts to farm cod.
“They used wild fish for breeding and the cod was escaping by biting into
the nets,” said Oeyvind Hansen. He heads the national cod breeding
program at Nofima, the only research center that works with the selective
breeding of cod.
Around half of all the fish raised in a pen died, Hansen noted. Growth
rates were slow and the financial crisis of 2008 starved companies of credit.
By 2015, the country produced no farmed cod at all.
What changed since the recent past?
But Nofima continued the research into cod breeding thanks to public
spending from the Norwegian ministry of fisheries. The company has now
bred five generations of farmed cod.
“Through selective breeding, the fish has adapted to farm life,” said
Hansen. “We have learned a lot about the biology and we have selected the
fish best suited for fish farming.”
Loss rates in the pens are down to about 15 percent. The fish do not eat
each other as much, they grow faster and no longer try to escape, Hansen
said. Norcod said its loss rates were much lower.
Norcod’s Riber said the business is growing thanks to improvements in
equipment from the salmon industry. Salmon farming has grown in 20
years into a $8-billion industry that exports 1.1 million tons of fish. Salmon
fishing is now Norway’s third-largest export after crude oil and natural gas.
 Not everyone is pleased about the restart of cod farming.
“We have sustainable cod stocks in the wild in many areas in Norway
that are thriving,” said Arnold Haapnes. He heads the biodiversity program
at environmental group Friends of the Earth Norway. “So why should we
use (public) money to compete with the wild cod?”
Farmed salmon often escape during storms and mate with the wild
salmon, he said. This causes introgression: the mixing of genes between
wild fish and farm fish. Introgression lowers the amount of genes available
in the wild population, he said. It also increases the effects of disease and
environmental changes on the fish.
Norcod said it was able to prevent escapes, including in bad weather,
by using the right equipment and with inspections of the nets to make sure
there are no holes.
Fishing rights are a major issue within the European Union. Norway is
not an EU member, however. The country negotiates limits and other
issues with the group each year. It is also negotiating a trade deal with
Britain — its biggest trading partner.
The Norwegian Seafood Council, a trade body, said Norway exported
nearly 200,000 tons of cod, valued at $1.1 billion in 2018. The largest
markets were Portugal, Britain and France.
“We need to produce more healthy seafood,” said Fisheries Minister
Odd Emil Ingebrigtsen, “And farmed cod can provide a regular source.”