Norway’s Directorate of Fisheries had launched an investigation into the mass escape of juvenile cod from three cages operated by the Gadus Group.
The escape occurred in late September, with an 87,000 cod going missing, weighing an average of 600 grams. So far, Gadus has managed to recapture 408 of the escapees.
Norway's aquaculture regulator blamed the escape on faulty design and construction of net-pens at the company’s northernmost farming site, in Alida, More og Romsdal, Norway. The company said it told authorities the escape was an "isolated and unprecedented incident."
“We are taking this very seriously and have taken every responsible action since we found the faulty nets. We have introduced measures to prevent it from happening again,” Gadus Group Founder and CEO Ola Kvalheim told SeafoodSource.
Norway's Directorate of Fisheries said it is working with the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research to undertake a study to ascertain what the escape may mean in the longer-term for wild populations of coastal cod. The fear is that the two may interbreed – though given the size of the fish, and their likely poor adaption to living in the wild, the agency said the escaped cod could be too small to survive to maturity. Researchers plan to resume field tests in the spring of 2023 to see if any farmed cod can be found at local spawning grounds.
Earlier in 2022, Norway’s fisheries department issued new rules for fish-farming facilities that require more robust escape-proof designs and operations. The new rules are scheduled to come into force in 2023.
“We have laid down a revised set of regulations that increases safety against fish escapes at the farms, while at the same time giving the industry more flexibility. I believe that it will benefit both the industry and the wild salmon,” Norway Fisheries and Oceans Minister Bjørnar Skjæran said in a release at the time.
Gadus operates from seven farming sites in Norway, and employs 80 people. It aims to produce 30,000 metric tons of cod annually by 2025.
In early December 2022, Gadus celebrated its first commercial-scale harvest, with the fish exceeding the company's expectations in terms of growth rate and size. The harvested fish weighed an average of 4.8 kilograms.
Photo courtesy of the Gadus Group
