More trouble for the family-owned salmon farming company.
During an algae bloom in spring, Salak lost 420,000 fish. Subsequently, part of the company’s harvest plant in near Troms, Northern Norway, was damaged by landslides.
Now Salaks’ sister company the smolt producer Salangfisk has been hit major incident. Up to 800,000 fish may have died during an incident in the RAS facility, which was discovered last Wednesday.
“We lost a lot of fish inside the plant. We had a case of H2S, a gas that develops in a natural decomposition process. And when you discover this, it’s already too late. There is a threat in stagnant water. It has evolved in pipes and got into the bodies of fish. There has been a technical failure in one of the guys. There is a department that has been hit, these were fish that were ready for release,” said general manager Ken Rune Bekkeli to Folkebladet.
Bekkeli told the newspaper that the figure of 800,000 has not been finally confirmed.
“Anyway, this is a big loss, but we do not have the overview yet. 2019 will be a year we want to forget,” said Bekkeli.
In total, there are 15 branches in the smolt plant. The company should now have taken measures to prevent such a thing from happening again, but Bekkeli emphasised that they also took action before this incident occurred.
SalmonBusiness has tried to contact Ken Rune Bekkeli to confirm the final mortality toll. He has so far not answered our inquiries, and the administration stated that Bekkeli is away from the office.
