The global seafood company Mowi is offering a bounty to fishers who catch escaped salmon after an estimated 27,000 fish went missing from a farm off the Norwegian coast in what campaigners said was a “disaster for wild salmon”.
The world’s largest farmed salmon producer is offering a reward of 500 kroner (£36) per salmon caught after it said a quarter of its 105,000 salmon population escaped from a cage in Troms, north-west Norway.
The Norwegian directorate of fisheries said the escape was reported on Sunday by Mowi, which said it discovered damage to the outer ring of a pen during stormy weather at the Storvika V facility in Dyrøy municipality, Troms. The average weight of the escaped fish was 5.5kg (12.1lbs), they said.
Norwegian authorities were on site on Monday inspecting the facility and issued an order to expand the company’s efforts to recapture the fish.
Vegard Oen Hatten, a spokesperson for the fisheries directorate, said: “Normally, fish farmers are only allowed to conduct recapture operations within a 500-metre zone around the facility in the event of an escape. However, based on the potential scale of this incident, Mowi was instructed to extend recapture efforts beyond this zone.”
Mowi said it was “a serious and very regrettable situation” and that fish caught by registered fishers could be delivered to fish “reception centres” around the area in return for the 500 kroner bounty.
Escaped salmon pose huge environmental problems, campaigners say. They endanger wild salmon by reducing their genetic diversity, increasing infection from sea lice and intensify competition for spawning grounds.
In Norway, which exports 1.2m tonnes of farmed salmon a year, the problem is such that last summer wild salmon numbers dropped to a historic low, resulting in the closure of 33 rivers to salmon fishing. This summer 42 rivers and three fjords have been proposed for closure.
“27,000 farmed salmon on the run is a disaster for wild salmon,” said Pål Mugaas, a spokesperson for Norske Lakseelver (Norwegian Salmon Rivers).
“Science has proved that interbreeding between wild stocks and farmed salmon produce offspring that in the long term has low survival rate in nature.”
The Norwegian scientific advisory committee for Atlantic salmon has classified escaped farmed salmon as one of the major threats to wild salmon. Two-thirds of wild Atlantic salmon stocks in Norway are believed to have genetic interference with escaped farmed salmon.
Despite acknowledging that the wild North Atlantic salmon is under “existential threat”, Norway’s environment minister, Andreas Bjelland Eriksen, last month ruled out a ban on open-net fish farming at sea.
Instead, he said he planned to seek an “acceptable level” of pollution for the wild salmon population.
A Mowi spokesperson, Ola Helge Hjetland, told the newspaper VG: “It is very regrettable and something that should not happen.”
Mowi did not immediately respond to a Guardian request for comment.
