Environmental challenges

Aquaculture map

Norwegian aquaculture production

Bellona, 12/01-2009

Norway is the world largest producer of farmed salmon. Since the start of the 19070s there has been a consistently strong growth in production. The last decade it has also been focused on developing production and markets for other species than Atlantic salmon and rainbow trout. Examples of this are cod, halibut and mussels.

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Source: The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries
Salmon and rainbow trout
In 2007 it was produced 738,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon and 78,000 tonnes of rainbow trout in Norway. This represents more than a doubling in production over the last ten years. In 2006 Norway produced 48 per cent of the total production of Atlantic salmon in the world and has still an annual consistently strong growth. The production of rainbow trout indicates a flatter development with the peak in 2002, which was at 84,000 tonnes.

Marine species

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Source: The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries
Following the success of the farmed salmon the industry are now seeing more and more opportunity in developing the production of other species. Among marine species, it is especially cod that have had a positive trend. The production of cod set a record in 2006 with more than 11,000 tons, but declined slightly in 2007. Production of halibut and char has also had a relatively large decline the previous year. The production of cod and halibut were in 2007 respectively 9,611 tons and 397 tons. Since 2000 cod had a particularly strong growth until the peak year of 2006. It is expected a continued strong growth in the production of cod in the years to come.

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Source: The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries
Shellfish
Among the production of shellfish blue mussels are the dominant species. Mussel farming has a long history in Norway. Several periods of commitment to this species has ended in great trouble and bankruptcies. One of the problems has been to ensure access of fresh mussels during the full year and partly because of algae bloom which periodically leads to development of toxic mussels. In recent years the production has fluctuated up and down. In 2005 it was produced just below 5,000 tonnes of mussels. But both 2006 and 2007 were years of declining production. In 2007 the production of oysters was 2,473 tonnes. There are a lot of other species of shellfish aquaculture in Norway. Among these we find scallops, oysters, O-mussels, lobster, king crab and sea urchins.

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