Fishers will be offered a 500 kroner reward per farmed salmon caught after roughly a quarter of its 105,000 salmon escaped from its Storvika V facility in Dyrøy municipality, Troms, northwest Norway.
Norway’s fisheries directorate said that the escape was reported on Sunday. Mowi said the escape was a ‘serious and very regrettable situation’ and that reception centres had been set up in the local area where registered fishers could return fish.
Pål Mugaas, a spokesperson for Norske Lakseelver (Norwegian Salmon Rivers), told The Guardian that the escape was a disaster for wild salmon.
Farmed salmon entering waters where their wild counterparts and other fish live poses significant problems for ecosystems.
Fish escaping from farms have a higher incidence of disease than their wild counterparts. These diseases could kill off wild stock, impacting ecosystems.
Furthermore, the changed diet, lives and conditions of farmed fish compared to wild fish means that if they were to be bred with wild fish, the offspring would be less likely to survive in the wild, leading to dwindling populations.
The Norwegian scientific advisory committee for Atlantic salmon has classified farmed fish as a major threat to wild salmon.
Dwindling wild stocks saw the closure of 33 rivers to salmon fishing, with 42 rivers and three fjords proposed for closure this year, The Guardian reported.
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