I will be blunt. In a few years Norwegian Atlantic salmon will be a thing of the past. The reason is simply that we produce far more farmed salmon than the Eco-systems in our fjords can hold. The result is that farmed salmon is spreading paracites like salmon lice (Lepeophtheirus salmonis) to both salmon and trout in such numbers that the smolt never reaches the open sea, and thus never returns to spawn.

The result are clear. This years salmon season has been branded a catastrophe in the Norwegian sport fishing community. For the 2010 season salmon rivers in entire counties will probably be closed next year as the number of fish ready to spawn in some rivers are down to a hand full.

The situation is even more dire for the sea trout. Unlike salmon, that goes into the open sea, the sea trout remain in the fjords trough the winter months. And is simply killed off by the shere number of salmon lice. They have no chance of surviving in a fjord system where the bio-mass is not doubled or tripled by the fish farms. They hold 10-12 times the number of fish than the eco-system in the fjords can sustain.

At the same time, the industry is systematically under reporting the number of lice per fish held in their farms. And despite Norwegian law saying that if there is more than 1 salmon lice per fish in a farm. The fish must be destroyed, little or nothing is being done. Indeed the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, the agency responsible for enforcing the law, has been reported to the police by an environmentalist organisation for failing to enforce the laws set there to protect our food. they have the means to order the slaughter of infected fish. But so far have only fined one fish farm. This while one of every four fish farms is heavily infected with lice.

The problems our fjords are facing is not ending with wild salmon and sea trout being wiped out in front of our eyes. Hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon, trout and cod have escaped from the farms this year. In some rivers more than 50% of the salmon cought are farmed salmon.

As for the farmed cod, they are running away as fast as they put them in the fjord based farms. Fishermen are catching more and more of these. At the same time the wild coastal cod stock is collapsing all allong the coast. Overfishing has to take its part of the blame. But when we know that one single fish farm, is poluting the water as much as an entire small town. And we are here talking about feed, medicine, and excrement from the fish that goes untreated, straight into the sea, it can not exactly be of much help for the cod and saithe in our fjords.

You may say that wild fish will do this too.  But when a fjord holds 10-12 times the bio-mass it would normally sustain, anyone except the fish farming industry, would acknowledge that this is a problem.

This will spell doom for the next generation of salmon that will leave the rivers in april to venture out into the open sea. Not many of them will return to spawn unless we can clean the fjords of the salmon lice. Meanwhile the lice is exterminating our stock of seatrout. Indeed the yearly national seatrout fishing competition arranged by the Norwegian Association of Hunters and Anglers have been cancelled this year du to the dire situation for our sea-trout.

So do not expect that the beutiful fjords of  Norway to give you much of a sportsfishing adventure in the future. You will have to settle for a good view…well…that will be broken too, when the new high voltage cables the plan to stretch across our most beutiful fjords get built in a few years. So if you wan’t the sight of a beutiful fjord in the future…go somewhere else. Ours are broken both above and bellow the surface.