A potential mistake with catastrophic consequences. On August 20, nearly 3,500 farmed salmon escaped from an Arctic fish farm off the village of Patreksfjörður in the Westfjords region of northwest Iceland, The Guardian reports. Since then, some of these genetically modified salmon have been found in 32 rivers across the country, posing a threat to the species locally.
A threat to wild salmon
“This is an issue that worries us greatly. Therefore, we have taken measures to reduce the possible negative impact of the leak,” Stein Stein Ove Tveiten, CEO of Arctic Fish, the salmon farming company behind the incident, told Fish Farmer. These measures include funding specialized divers to track down escaped salmon. Because it must be said that these breeding specimens pose a certain threat to the local environment.
Due to a malfunction in the light control system affecting salmon sexual maturity, 35% of the escaped fish were sexually mature. However, several studies have shown that when farmed salmon reproduce with wild Atlantic salmon, their offspring mature more quickly, causing the species to lose their ability to survive and reproduce in their natural environment, for example through increased competition for food and accommodation.
“A wake-up call”
So if the salmon’s escape does not violate Iceland’s fish farming law, a negligence investigation has been opened against the company, whose directors face up to two years in prison, explains We Demain magazine. However, this is not the only salmon farming operation to suffer an outbreak. In 2022, another company, Arnarlax, was fined £705,000 for failing to report an outbreak of 81,000 fish.
“This is more than a wake-up call,” said Jón Kaldal, environmental activist at the Icelandic Wildlife Fund. In addition to these leaks, it was also recalled that a medium-sized fish farm could release as much wastewater as a city of 50,000 people and that the products added to the water could lead to a proliferation of harmful algae.