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Tasmania's big three salmon operations are foreign-owned. Here's a look at how the industry operates overseas
Some opponents to the Tasmanian industry have called for fish farms to be put on land and out of waterways. (ABC News: Luke Bowden)asmania's salmon industry has faced considerable controversy in recent months.
From mass fish deaths to animal cruelty claims, salmon escapes, algal blooms and claims salmon farming is threatening the future of a species, a lot of pressure has piled on the industry.
But is Tasmania alone in the world with salmon farming being a controversial topic?
The answer is no, overseas counterparts have been fighting battles of their own for decades, largely linked to the impact of farmed salmon on declining wild salmon populations.
Worth an estimated $US20 billion ($32 billion) worldwide, commercial Atlantic salmon farming has spread to waters off Russia, Scandinavia, North America, the United Kingdom and Chile.
And while those global economic powerhouses may seem worlds apart from Australia's most southern state, there are plenty of parallels between how the industries are managed — and how the public has responded.
Here is how a few of the larger players operate.
Pressure has been mounting on Tasmania's salmon industry. (ABC News: Ebony ten Broeke)
Canada
- Industry size: 4th largest in the world
- Salmon production: 90,000 tonnes per year (2023)
Across the ocean, the world's fourth-largest producer of farmed salmon is, like Tasmania, also concentrated around an island.
The majority of Canada's salmon pens are set on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia (BC).
But the industry there is facing an uncertain future.
Dominated by open-net pens owned by Norwegian giants Mowi, Cermaq and Greig, Canada's production blossomed for decades, before plummeting by about 45 per cent in the last few years.
That followed the closure of multiple farms in BC after various environmental action groups documented sea lice outbreaks and other diseases among farmed fish.
In 2024, the Canadian government announced it would ban open-pen salmon farms in BC's coastal waters by June 2029, citing the need to protect native populations of wild Pacific salmon.
The industry has since hit back, arguing that timeframe was unrealistic and that land-based or contained salmon farming was unfeasible.
With a federal election slated for April 28, the salmon sector is hoping to convince the next leader to overturn the planned ban.
However, the ban in BC won't directly affect companies like Cooke Seafood — owner of Tasmanian producer Tassal — which operates its farms on Canada's east coast.
Cooke, a Canadian multinational that grew from a family-ran salmon farm in New Brunswick to become the world's largest, privately owned seafood company, bought Tasmania's Tassal in 2022.
The company is no stranger to controversy.
Cooke's Canadian subsidiary, Kelly Cove Ltd, was fined half a million dollars in 2013 for releasing an agricultural pesticide into the ocean in an attempt to address a major sea lice infestation.
On its website, Cooke says it is "dedicated to our role as environmental stewards, and through our many certifications and partnerships with research institutions, we continue to set the highest standards for responsible harvesting and sustainable processes across all lines of business".
The company currently has plans to more than triple its production on Canada's east coast.
Norway
- Industry size: Largest in the world
- Salmon production: 1.2 million tonnes per year (2023)
Norway is the world's largest farmed salmon producer, exporting roughly 1.2 million tonnes annually — more than 10 times the size of Tasmania's industry (83,000 tonnes in 2020-21).
The sector has expanded dramatically since the 1970s, with open-net pens stretching across its long coastline and into its fjords.
The Scandinavian country produces more than half of the world's farmed Atlantic salmon, and last year its exports were worth $US10 billion.
Notably, it is also the birthplace of the world's largest salmon producers, multinationals with fingers in almost every salmon-producing country.
An array of local salmon products lines a specialty seafood cabinet in Bergen, south-west Norway. (ABC Rural: Laurissa Smith)
But while farms are booming, wild Atlantic salmon stocks in Norway are at historic lows, and in 2021, the species was added to the list of its threatened species.
Global warming has been blamed for this, but not everyone agrees.
Investigative journalist Simon Saetre, who co-authored The New Fish after a five-year investigation into the salmon industry, says commercial salmon production has also played a major role.
"The main reasons for the salmon disappearing, is the lice from salmon operations and the escapees and diseases coming from salmon production,"he said.
Farmed Atlantic salmon sold at a supermarket in Toronto, Canada. (Supplied)
Mr Saetre said negative perceptions of the industry in Norway had become more prominent in the last few years.
"The Norwegian salmon industry has started a big campaign trying to say to the people, 'we are not good enough but we are working on some solutions'," he said.
"They have had campaigns before, but people see what's happening in the salmon pens, the pictures of salmon with big wounds, deformed salmon, diseases on the fish, they see it in the media.
"This is a problem for the industry."
Chile
- Industry size: 2nd largest in the world
- Salmon production: 727,000 tonnes per year, estimated (2024)
Chile exports around a million tonnes of salmon, with a turnover of $US6 billion, and employs more than 70,000 people. That makes it the world's second-largest producer.
Farming in Chile has also grown dramatically in recent decades, concentrated in the south of the country, along its coastline fjords and islands.
But its salmon industry has also been struggling to deal with its own government regulations, social licence to operate and environmental problems.
Farms there have one of the highest uses of antibiotics in the world because of harmful algal blooms.
Late last year, the green light was given to Chile to export its fresh Atlantic and coho salmon fillets to Australia.
Agriculture Minister Julie Collins says Australia is "a free-trading nation". (AAP Image: Mick Tsikas)
The Tasmanian salmon industry fears imports will bring new diseases into the country.
For biosecurity reasons, fresh Chilean salmon fillets are not allowed into the state.
The Coalition says it will ban Chilean salmon imports if it wins the upcoming federal election.
Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam said the import risk analysis behind the decision to allow Chilean salmon into Australia was 25 years old.
"Things have changed, technologies have improved and we need to make sure the science is right,"he said.
Federal Labor Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said she stood by the government's decision.
"We are a free-trading nation," she said.
"We have free trade agreements with other countries, where we don't put tariffs on other people's products."
Scotland
- Industry size: 3rd largest in the world
- Salmon production: 185,000 tonnes per year (2024)
More than 200 salmon farms are dotted along the western edge of mainland Scotland, pushing out into the lochs and coastlines of the remote Hebrides, Shetland and Orkney isles.
Scottish Sea Farms' salmon pens in the Sound of Mull. (Supplied: Facebook/Scottish Sea Farms)
Once made up of more than 150 independent businesses, Scotland's farms have been largely bought up by foreign interests over the last 40 years.
The owners of the country's salmon farms include Norway-linked Mowi, Scottish Sea Farms and Grieg, Canada's Cooke , the US's Loch Duart and the Faroe Islands' Bakkafrost.
Exporting more than 101,000 tonnes of salmon a year, the country is the third-largest producer in the world and directly employs about 2,200 people, according to the Scottish government.
The sector hasn't got off scot-free from its own share of environmental challenges.
In 2023, the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared wild Atlantic salmon endangered in the United Kingdom.
In the last few years, the sector has been hit by RSPCA certification suspensions triggered by covert video footage, unprecedented die-offs caused by jellyfish blooms, lice infestations and fish escapes.
Among that, industry trade body Salmon Scotland last year was successful in an application to drop the word "farmed" from the front of packaging.
The move attracted further criticism from animal welfare campaigners.
Salmon pens at Sian Bay, Scotland. (Supplied: Facebook/Scottish Sea Farms)
Can salmon farming be done on land?
In the wake of all the controversies and concerns, the investment tide has slowly been turning towards exploring 100 per cent land-based and in-ocean closed containment systems, as more eco-friendly alternatives.
Advocates say they have a lower environmental footprint, and reduce the risk of fish escapes and disease.
Salmon Tasmania, the state's peak body representing producers, believes such operations would be unviable and too costly.
"In the event that 100 per cent land-based salmon farming did become commercially viable, the facilities would be built closer to market areas on the mainland. Not regional Tasmania," according to its own fact sheet on the topic.
"The Tasmanian salmon industry believes a balance of growing our salmon on land and at sea will allow us to continue to farm sustainably and employ more local people."
Tasmania's salmon industry was affected by a mass mortality event in February. (Supplied: Bob Brown Foundation)
In Canada, Brian Kingzett from the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association, said if there was a business case for it, they would be doing it.
"Unfortunately, around the world in many jurisdictions, the science is suffering from well-meant, but often misguided, environmentalism," he said.
"We have yet to find any containment system around the world that has been able to effectively work at scale."
Live salmon are put into bins by Huon workers. (Supplied: Bob Brown Foundation)
On the back of the recent mass salmon mortality event in Tasmania's south, Australian online seafood guide GoodFish is encouraging people to swap farmed salmon for other Australian species.
In the UK, a growing number of chefs and restaurants have backed conservation charity WildFish's call to boycott farmed salmon in its Off the Table campaign, because of concerns over fish welfare and environmental issues.
Tasmania's three main salmon farming companies — Petuna, Tassal and Huon Aquaculture — did not respond to requests for comment.
Petuna is owned by New Zealand's Sealord.
Huon Aquaculture is owned by Brazil's JBS, the largest meat-processing company in the world, which has previously been rocked by scandal.
The greatest health challenge for the fish farming industry today is infection with the parasite Lepeophtheirus salmonis, better known as the salmon louse. Enormous resources are used to control the number of lice in the farm cages. Lice have proved to be increasingly resistant to the traditional chemical treatment agents, and new strategies with alternative methods are being developed.
The salmon louse is a small crustacean from the copepod family. It attacks the fish by attaching itself to the salmon in the copepod stage and injects a substance that inhibits the salmon's immune system locally. It remains there while it develops through several stages until it can move and gradually becomes a full-grown adult louse. The mobile lice move around the salmon and feed on mucus and skin cells. The damage to the skin can lead to scarring which makes the fish more susceptible to infections. Weakening of the skin can also allow salt water to get in. If the fish doesn't manage to get rid of the salt, it can have problems with maintaining its fluid balance.
Restricts the industry
In some areas of fish farming, increased numbers of salmon lice on both farmed salmon and wild salmon have been recorded. To avoid salmon lice limiting the stock of wild salmon, the occurrence of salmon lice on farmed fish determines to what extent the aquaculture industry can grow.
Seasonal variation
Salmon lice are cold-blooded and thrive at milder temperatures, preferably 7-15 °C. Extreme temperatures represent limits connected with poor wellbeing.
It has the potential to reproduce approximately all the year round, and as a cold-blooded creature the development speed increases as temperature rises. From an historical perspective, the challenges have been limited to Southern and Central Norway , but now the pressure of infection is also increasing in the northern counties. The Institute of Marine Research has amongst other things looked at the connection between temperature and lice.
Spread
Salmon lice propagate when adult females lay eggs, and the larvae are spread with the water flow. The warmer it is, the quicker the development and egg production progresses.
When the salmon lice hatch, they first of all become nauplius larvae. The larvae can move with the current over long distances. These are harmless to the fish and nor do they feed on them. The temperature determines how long this stage lasts. If it is warm in the water, it quickly changes to the next stage, a copepodite, and becomes a threat to the fish.
Temperature-dependent
The research suggests that the nauplius larvae live longest at 7–10°C. At 3°C there was almost no production of copepodites. At 5°C, the larvae turn into copepodites, but with limited ability to attach themselves to fish. The larvae also survived at 20°C, but in this case their lifetime was shorter, the organisms were smaller, and egg production was reduced.
It's at the copepodite stage that the salmon lice urgently need to find a fish to feed on if they are not to die of hunger. Read more about the importance of the temperature for the spread if salmon lice here.
Control strategies with salmon lice
Three main strategies have been used to control the number of lice in the aquaculture nets: chemical treatment, biological methods and operational measures. The aim of the strategies was to remove the lice, encourage them to stay at a distance or physically prevent them from approaching the fish. Most farmers find that a combination of measures is most effective, with cleaner fish being one of the several measures that is effective.
Chemical treatment
By dipping the fish in hydrogen peroxide for example, the lice release their hold, and the fish are returned louse-free to their cage. The disadvantages are that the salmon lice can become resistant, and it is uncertain whether the lice actually die from the treatment. The salmon can become stressed with repeated treatments and the treatment is expensive. It is also unknown what effect the different chemicals have on the environment around the farm.
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