Ocean Farm 1 fish looking good ahead of harvest
The first generation of salmon grown in SalMar’s revolutionary Ocean Farm 1 will be ready for harvest within the next couple of weeks, and the crop looks good, chief executive Olav-Andreas Ervik has said.
Some salmon from the cage were harvested for test purposes in September, about a year after being transferred to sea.
Speaking at the Seafood Days conference in the Norwegian village of Hell, Ervik said there had been good growth and low mortality.
Very good growth
“In a couple of weeks, the first generation will be ready. Since we are not completely up to date, we have not made any complete evaluation yet, but what I can say is that it looks very good at present.
“We have experienced very good growth, we’ve slaughtered a very nice, smooth and good fish, with good quality. There has been low mortality, and we have had low sea lice levels.”
SalMar, which co-owns Scottish Sea Farms, has also experienced escapes from Ocean Farm 1, something Ervik said they would have preferred to avoid.
“When it first happens, it is important to learn a lesson from that, and make sure that we minimise the risk that something like that will happen again,” he pointed out.
Three million salmon
SalMar will now take a further step towards open sea farming with the “Smart Fish Farm” development concept with MariCulture AS, which SalMar has bought a controlling stake in.
The cage is divided into eight zones and is designed to handle waves of up to 30 metres in the open sea. It has a diameter of 160 metres and it can accommodate three million salmon.
SalMar aims to establish a deepwater mooring in the Norwegian Sea off the coast of Trøndelag.
