Norway's New Oil: How Norway sold the world on salmon | Foreign Correspondent

0:04 These are the fjords of Norway, home to the biggest salmon industry in the world. Our growing appetite for the fish has transformed these waters into a virtual gold mine. >> The world needs more food. I think that this is the best way of producing food. In 50 years, salmon farming has transformed from small homemade pens into an $18 billion business. >> It is the second largest export industry after oil and gas.

0:36 >> Last year, Norway exported nearly 1.5 million tons of salmon all over the world. Most of it went to the US, Europe, and Asia. But even in Australia, it's found a big market. We imported about a,000 tons of it. In some parts of Norway, entire communities depend on it. >> Salmon industry has grown and grown and it has been unstoppable. But beneath the pristine image of clean fjords and perfect fillets lies an industry grappling with pollution and the spread of disease. An industry that's become so large, it's testing the very limits of its environment.

1:16 >> There is so much money involved in this. We have to ask what price are we willing to pay for for this fantastic industry. >> Is that a warning for places like Australia? >> Yes. >> For decades, Norway's built a reputation for worldclass salmon, producing it on a massive scale. But as the industry pushes to expand even further, it's raised questions about the true price of the fish that's landing on our plates.

2:06 This is your road. Thank you. >> Beautiful day out, isn't it? >> Yes. We have all the season in the one day. >> Yeah. It's the first week of wild salmon fishing season on the Gala River in central Norway. >> Every year, people come from around the world hoping to catch a wild Atlantic salmon.

2:36 And Brit Bogen's family has been fishing these waters for generations. What I remember most is the amount of salmon. I don't think I ever came down to the river without seeing salmon. >> It means a lot. It's a part of the history. It's our It's like our panda, if you will. >> But lately, landing a catch is becoming increasingly difficult. >> Oh, I have a salmon. >> What? >> I have a salmon. No, it's not. It's just a small one. No, I lost it.

3:06 >> Oh, I lost it. >> That's a good start, is it? >> Yeah, it's a great start. Let's do it again. Try again. Oh, >> in recent decades, the wild salmon population has plummeted. >> In the mid80s, it was like 1 million wild salmon coming back from the ocean to Norway. And now it's down to, I think it's around 300,000. So, that's a huge decline. >> There are a lot of reasons why wild salmon are struggling, from climate change to decades of over fishing. But Aunt Brit says one of the biggest threats sits much closer to home.

3:41 >> We have the fish farming industry right outside the national salmon fjord. We have escapes from the fish farming outside the fjord. Sometimes with yeah fish with diseases, contagious ones. It could wipe out the salmon stock if you're really unlucky. So I've always said that it's it's a sum of madness that's going to break the salmon. I'm heading into the heart of the salmon farming industry in Norway's rugged westernfueled region.

4:13 Modern salmon farming was invented right here in Norway and demand for the fish has more than doubled in the last 25 years. Fed by the omega-3 craze and the popularity of seafood in modern diets, Norway is a small country. It has a population of just 5.6 million people. But it supplies more than half the world's Atlantic salmon. Its industry is about 18 times the size of Tasmania's. And you can see just over here all these salmon farms that are dotted all along the coast.

4:52 On the edge of the port town of Olisonund lies the storefield. It's home to Hoffsith Aqua, one of more than a 100 companies farming salmon in Norway. Welcome. >> Nice to meet you. >> Welcome to Suf. >> Thank you. Life jacket. Oh, amazing. Yeah, let's do it. >> Today, Hoffset's project director, Ola Andre Nordal, is taking me to see their salmon up close. >> So, this is the natural home of the Atlantic salmon. We have deep fs. We have water running down from the mountain, and we have good currents in these fjords. So, it makes a perfect place to grow salmon.

5:32 The company is very aware of the challenges of intensive farming. >> So this is an open netappa. >> Inside there's a fishnet. A lot of fish. You could compare it to around thousand caddles. >> Really? >> Yeah. So it's it's a very effective way of producing proteins. >> Each of these pens holds about 145,000 salmon. They're raised for roughly 2 years before they end up on our plates.

6:06 Too often, having so many fish packed into a small space creates a breeding ground for parasites and disease. So, farms like this are tightly regulated. Companies have to report outbreaks. One of the biggest threats to farm salmon is sea lice, a parasite that eats the flesh of the salmon. The treatment involves putting the fish in hot water or scrubbing them. It can be fatal to the fish today. They're looking well. There's just one stray lice here.

6:36 >> Well, the biggest challenge that we have today is obviously the sea lice. Doing lice treatment is really costly and it's also stressing the fish a lot. But the the real issue with the sea lice is not for the farm salmon. It's actually for the wild salmon. Climate change is turbocharging the problem. With sea temperatures rising, the number of lice has exploded and it's spread from the farms to infect wild salmon.

7:09 The government here uses a traffic light system. If too many wild salmon are infected, farming is capped. >> Green means that you can grow. There is there's some monitoring on the amount of sea lice per fish. Yellow means that it stays cool. You can continue as you have done already or you are doing already. And the red means that you have to reduce your production. >> and what color is this area? >> This area is yellow.

7:37 >> The industry has been racing to lower fish deaths in its farms after they hit record highs in 2023. Nearly 17% of salmon died before harvest from a range of diseases. And the government wants that mortality rate to be at about 5%. Do you think that's realistic? >> Absolutely. For us, we had in I think it was 2024 25, we had a mortality rate of around 4%. And we would like the fish to thrive because it's good for the fish and it's good for us and for business.

8:21 On Norway's vast southwestern coast sits the city of Bergen. Fishing has shaped life here for centuries. And the bounty of Norway's waters is on full display. You can really smell this place before you even see it. This market has been here for about 800 years now. And it just tells you how much seafood is at the heart of Norwegian life. But most of the salmon that's here isn't wild. It's actually farmed.

8:59 The farms are producing more and more salmon. Last year alone, production increased by almost 200,000 tons. This is where they end up in factories like this one just outside Bergen. >> And here they are packing together a container going to Japan with products that has been processed in our factory. >> Trund Helga Nigard's factory on the tiny island of Sautra processes and exports about 5 million salmon a year. You >> got a soup for you.

9:30 >> Thank you. Workers here are slaughtering, billeting, smoking, and packing these fish for the international market. The condition they're in has an impact on the price they attract. >> What are we looking at, Trund? >> So, here we are looking at the skin like looking at the surface of the skin and seeing when it's like this is perfect. You see there are no ws or anything. Well, for instance, on this fish, this is little wound. Then she takes it from the line and then we diskin it.

10:07 >> These are production fish. They need to be filleted before export. >> You have to take the skin off because when it's a production fish, you can't export it according to the Norwegian regulation. >> Most of Norway salmon is superior and ordinary grade. But since 2018, the amount of production fish has more than doubled. Is production fish safe to eat? >> Yes, I that that is one very important point. But no fish leaves here unless it's safe to eat.

10:39 >> So is it about more reputation than it is about the safety? >> It's making sure that Norwegian salmon has a good reputation in the market, of course. >> The industry is pushing to farm even more fish. Some fear animal welfare is being compromised. On the outskirts of Oslo, I've come to meet retired government veterinarian Trig Papa who has been studying farm salmon for decades.

11:10 >> They are definitely very sophisticated animals and also these are very strong athletic animals. These images were taken during government inspections of salmon farms in the last 3 years. >> Next picture here, this this is a very bad one, I think, because you see here, these are very big open ulcers. Most of the disease and welfare problems we see in farmed fish today are the results of the way we are treating the fish and breeding the fish. This is obviously a very painful condition for the fish as it would be in humans. So they have most likely suffered a very long time before they were cooled and slaughtered.

11:55 >> All these fish would be considered production grade. So people are eating fish like this. >> Yes. because you can cut away the ulcers so you don't see it as a consumer and then you will just buy those small pieces of salmon, vacuum-acked frozen salmon and you don't see anything of this. And of course, I would say that some farmed fish are obviously happy because you have examples of fish farms with a very good animal welfare and very low mortality. So, so they show that it's possible to do it this way.

12:31 >> While Norway has strict regulations, the rapid growth of the industry means authorities are struggling to keep watch. >> They don't have the capacity to follow up on this neither economically or in terms of people to to do the the inspections etc. So, so obviously lots of things are going on unnoticed. What kind of pressure have you faced when you've spoken out against some of the issues happening in salmon farming?

13:02 Well, it's definitely not very popular amongst the fish farmers of course and I think one of the problems we see here is that there are very many scientists and they cannot speak freely about this because there is a certain pressure on you because then you act negatively to the industry and that is of course not good for the business. So my experience is that very many colleagues they refuse to talk about this.

13:45 >> How are you? >> Hi Simon. >> Nice to meet you Simon. >> Hi >> Chhatil. >> Nice to meet you. >> How are you both? >> Few people have examined the rise of salmon farming in as much detail as Simon Satra and Chhatil Ole. They spent 5 years investigating the industry, releasing a highly critical book. >> Yellow tail, halibet, king crab. >> Should we get the ones that are not salmon? >> I guess investigating salmon all these years, you would have no appetite for it after all of that.

14:14 >> But we will of course leave you to eat whatever. >> What does salmon mean to Norway? Is it more than just a fish? >> Yeah, it's a symbol. It's the king of fish. is like the the biggest fish. Not many people know this, but the Norwegian state actually invented the salmon sushi. The Japanese, they didn't want salmon in their sushi, but they made some campaigns directed at Japanese housewives and convinced the Japanese to start using salmon in the sushi. This of course became a trend food all over the world. So the entire global obsession with salmon sushi was actually started by the Norwegian government.

14:57 >> Yeah. Yeah. It's a state project >> like selling sun in Sahara. >> Exactly. >> Smoke boots. >> I was so good. >> How powerful is the salmon industry in Norway? >> It's powerful. It's they they make a lot of money. The money goes into private hands. So along the coast there are are some incred in incredibly rich individuals and they have strong lobby groups.

15:30 >> So it's not only the the industry that makes it powerful. It's the combination of state and industry. So if you oppose this industry and you are critical then you are kind of opposing the Norwegian future. >> Simon and Chhatil say the industry is a victim of its own success. They created this industry so fast. They created this new fish and then they are not able to foresee the consequences and they try to repair it with something new trying to fix it and then there's a new consequence of that and they're trying to fix that problem.

16:07 >> We invent things to kind of repair damage from the last invention. There are more than a thousand fjords winding their way through Norway's coastline, carved by glaciers, some of them are more than a kilometer deep. Pollution from the fish farms is flowing directly into the fjords and combined with rising sea temperatures, it's playing havoc with the underwater environment.

16:38 >> Hey, >> nice to meet you. >> Nice to meet you. Are you looking forward to some cold water diving? I very much so am. >> Are you sure? >> Yeah, I I think so. I hear it's very cold out there. >> Yeah. We'll first show you the beauty. >> Yeah. >> Then we go into the fuse. >> I'm heading out with free diver and underwater photographer Alexander Nordal. We're on the cusp of summer in Norway, but you wouldn't know it.

17:10 Thankfully, Alexander is a lot more comfortable in these waters than I am. >> We're going to swim to that pole. It's basically an open sea. We are almost out of off the coast. And this is what I call a reference area. It's an area where I document the beauty of the kelp. And hopefully it's still beautiful. >> And so when you say a control area, it's basically an area where there aren't any salmon farms close by.

17:32 >> Yeah. and the the nutrient pollution in the ocean should be less because there are no people, there no runoffs, there no industry, there's nothing. >> Before we dive in though, we encounter a minor snag. We have a bit of a hole in my suit, but Alexander has found a solution. So hopefully that water doesn't get in because it is cold out there. >> Yeah, I going to tell you that it might be 8° >> 8. Okay, that's good to know.

18:04 Dry suit finally secured. >> Perfect. >> It's time to dive. We're here to see a stretch of coastline that's largely untouched by aquaculture. Underwater, the ecosystem appears healthy. The kelp forests are thriving.

18:36 Oh my gosh. Okay, >> it's just incredible in there. There's just cowpole all over near that pole that we just swam to and a huge drop off. You can see these massive jellyfish down there. It is just amazing. Our next stop is deeper into the fjord alongside a large salmon farm. We're preparing to go under again. This time into ice cold water fresh with melted snow.

19:09 >> It's actually really cold. >> It's very cold. I can already feel that. >> Here the landscape is completely different. A bloom of harmful turf algae is choking the kelp, carpeting it in brownish yellow sludge. Waste from salmon farms can fuel this algae growth. And the warming waters driven by climate change are making the problem worse.

19:43 Aside from a few fish and many large jellyfish, the kelp forest is empty. You can see just over there is one of the fish farms. So, we didn't get too far at all. But all along this coast where Alexander and I have just been swimming, you can see the algae has just completely taken hold of the area. The contrast is so so sharp compared to where we just were swimming before.

20:16 For the last three years, Alexander's teamed up with a group of scientists to document the impacts of salmon farming all over Norway. The places I've been diving here has changed from one year to another. Not in a small sense, but you know, you cannot recognize the place from one year to another. When I swim around like I the first couple of years I was just screaming inside and now I'm just sad.

20:47 Biologist Tom Pettison has reviewed Alexander's work. He's a government regulator responsible for issuing aquaculture permits in one of the most intensively farmed fjord systems in the country. >> Do you remember the first time that you came to this fjord? What was it like? >> Well, well, the biggest change is all these fish farms that popped up everywhere. There's one fish farm there. There's one there. If you go around the corner, there's another three. And if you go around that corner, there's another three. So the fjord is filled with fish farms.

21:21 >> While monitoring water quality in the Hardunga Fjord, the second longest in Norway, Tom found that oxygen levels in some areas had dropped by a third since the 1950s. >> The major change we see is the level of oxygen in the deeper part of the field, which has changed dramatically. Without oxygen, nothing lives. >> What has caused this drop in oxygen? >> Two major factors. The one is climate change and the other is increased discharges from mainly aquaculture.

21:54 >> So the salmon farms you mean? >> Yeah. >> When Tom saw the trend, he rejected applications to quadruple salmon farming in the fjord. >> So you think you may actually have to reduce the amount of fish that's being produced overall >> in some fields? Yes. And we have done that in in the past. One of the smaller fuels where the oxygen went really low, we withdrew two licenses and the other three were reduced with 75%.

22:23 So the production in that field went down with about 90%. The disadvantages with this salmon farm is that it's it's not a closed system. It's it's like a livestock building put into the sea without walls, without a floor, without a roof. >> It's not just oxygen levels that are changing. Chemicals and heavy metals used in decades past have built up in the fjords, adding more strain on the ecosystem. >> We've been measuring pesticides at a site that has been followed for 20 years, and it was still there. It doesn't just dissolve. It doesn't just disappear. There's no magic here. What's thrown into the water stays in the water.

23:09 It's quite simple. Norway has carved out its stake as a global salmon empire in these fjords. Now it's facing bigger questions about its future. >> Hi Christa. Hi. >> Thanks for making the time for us. No problem. I've come to meet Christa Horse from the salmon industry's influential lobby group and its biggest defender. >> It is the second largest export industry after oil and gas. So it's important is increasingly important especially for the coastal communities where it's up to 40 50% of all working in private sector. Scientists and local governments have been recording oxygen depletion and an increase in pollution in multiple fields across Norway. Do you think that economic growth has been prioritized over environmental protection >> in the fields where the ocean level has been going down? It's mostly on points where it's not farming activity. So the the scientific community do not agree on that and the institute of marine research that do deliver the annual risk assessment to the Norwegian government saying that it emissions are not a problem.

24:26 >> But that also contradicts the opinion of local governments. The like we are not just talking about independent scientists. This is from the actual county governments that are responsible for these fods. due to climate change, it's less new water flow flowing in and due to power stations where you have the the water from the waterfalls coming down and some of those fields there is local problems. Of course, when where the emissions or where the local problems are and in a way that farming would be a problem then of course you should take down farming activity and we are doing that all the time. We always follow the regulations that that are set and we have this probably the strictest regulated food industry in Norway and in Europe probably.

25:12 >> On this point of strict regulations, if they were completely effective, would we be seeing these kinds of consequences on an environmental level? >> Well, I'm not quite sure what kind of consequences you see. I'm talking about the overall oxygen depletion but also the presence of these heavy chemicals, heavy metals that are remaining in the fuel system. They don't go away quickly. >> No. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Every every industry and every food industry has an impact and and the goal is of course all the time to reduce the impact as much as possible. That goes without saying.

25:46 >> Is the industry reaching the limits of what it can sustainably produce? >> No, I don't think so. But we have to have to have a growth within the limits that in nature can can cope with in a good way and that would imply introduction of a lot of different production methods and the industry is investing and developing all the time. So >> back on storefran hoffs is acutely aware of the industry's need to adapt. The company has invested millions into keeping its fish alive, including underwater surveillance across its farms.

26:23 >> You have to monitor the fish all the time, making sure that there's no uncertainties in how the fish is growing because you can have diseases. I mean, we have really good vaccines programs in in Norway. We're not using any antibiotics and it's really up to us also as operators to make sure that we monitor it so that we sense whenever something is wrong. But keeping a closer eye on the fish is only part of the solution. Hoffsith is also betting on new ways of farming. Nets that will sit deep under the water to avoid lice and closed systems that contain waste and separate the salmon from the surrounding water, protecting both the fish and the fjord. They call this one the egg.

27:10 >> We farm fish inside and the fish is separated from the sea so we can handle biological risk. And this is the first prototype. we are building a bigger sized egg. it's 10 times as big as this one. So welcome on board. >> It's reduced the number of young fish that die but cost 10 times more than an open net pen. For now closed systems like this are rare. The overwhelming majority in Norway remain open net.

27:40 >> We have two systems in operation at the moment. >> Why has it taken so long for these to be rolled out? Well, this closed containment systems comes at a relatively high investment price. To raise money for for this is challenging. Do you think that this is what the future of salmon farming is going to look like? >> I think it's part of the solution. Back on the Gala River, the anglers are packing up.

28:13 No wild salmon have been caught today. For people like Aunt Britt, the fear goes beyond just this season. As the climate warms and the demand for farm salmon continues to grow, she's worried about the future. Being an angler, you know, you never give up the hope. So maybe tomorrow it's a new day. I really hope the salmon just start arriving late this year. It's too early to give up. >> Do you think the future generations will look back on this time and the amount of farming that Norway has been doing differently?

28:48 >> Yeah, I think I think they're going to be astonished over what we have done and the things we have not undone. You know, everything we do is for the future generation. So, losing the salmon, we lose a lot.