The first generation of salmon grown in Ocean Farm 1 will soon be ready for harvest.

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.

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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.

Olav-Andreas Ervik updates delegates in Hell about Ocean Farm 1. Click to enlarge. Photo: Ole Andreas Drønen / Kyest.no

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.