Við mælum eindregið með því að smella á hlekkinn sem hér fylgir og skoða magnaða nýja úttekt norsku Sunstone stofnunarinnar á ástandi norskra fjarða af völdum sjókvíeldis á laxi.
Framsetningin á tölum, texta og myndefni sem er tekið neðansjávar er gríðarlega sterk og upplýsandi.
„Ímyndaðu þér almenningssundlaugina þína, 25 metra langa, með sex brautum og tveggja metra dýpi að jafnaði.
Um leið og þú lætur þig síga ofan í laugina bætast 166 manns við hliðina á þér. Með fleiri en 20 manns um hverja braut yrði sundið að samstilltu ströggli. Snerting við aðra yrði óumflýjanleg og það væri óþægilega þröngt á þingi. Þannig er líf eldislaxa í sjókvíum.“
Við mælum eindregið með þessari sláandi og vönduðu umfjöllun á vef Sunstone. Þar koma m.a. fram eftirfarandi upplýsingar:
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Beneath, a barren seabed is littered with clumps of leftover fish feed and fish faeces. It is carpeted white with sulphur-oxidising bacteria, a visual indicator of organic overload, low oxygen and toxic sulphides. A red flag that the seabed is overwhelmed and entering the dead zone.
Further out from the pipes, dense clouds of organic particles drift like falling snow, loaded with nutrients that will be carried far from their source to settle in other areas. Among the rocks, hordes of white sea urchins (Gracilechinus acutus) have been lured to the feast from deeper water. They gorge on the free food spilling from the pipes. In the feeding frenzy, the rocks, too, are stripped of life.
The Mowi-owned Herand facility is not breaking the law. When presented with our findings, the firm said it would “investigate” the matter of uncleaned fish feed entering the water around this hatchery. Mowi states that all its facilities comply with national emissions requirements.
This scene isn’t an anomaly along Norway’s coasts. This is just one hatchery among more than 180 discharging into the fjords. Adding to this are the open-pen sea farms, of which there are 995 spread along the coast.
These farms are home to more than 400 million salmon per year. That’s a lot of extra beings eating and excreting in Norway’s fjords and coastal waters, housed with little or no waste management.
Picture your local public swimming pool, 25 metres long, 6 lanes wide, with a uniform depth of 2 metres. As you slide in for a dip, 166 other people drop in beside you. With more than 20 people per lane, swimming would need to be a coordinated jostle. There would be bodily contact at times, and after a while, it might start to feel uncomfortably crowded. That’s life for a farmed salmon.
Studies show that fish are sentient and capable of experiencing playfulness, curiosity, stress and fear. Even domesticated ones. So for these farmed salmon, daily life must be a claustrophobic affair, and vastly different to the life of their wild ancestors.
…Sunstone Institute research reveals that less than half of the nutrients fed to the salmon are absorbed and help the fish to grow. The other generous half is excreted as faeces and urine, or remains uneaten.
Mixed together, this waste rains down through open pens into the surrounding water. The result is a rich nutrient soup of dissolved nitrogen, phosphorus and organic carbon.
… Sunstone Institute research reveals that, reaching a pinnacle in 2025, the nitrogen and phosphorus in this waste were equivalent to the raw sewage from 17.2 million and 20 million people, respectively. That’s more than three times the population of Norway. Triple the toilet waste from an entire country.
…So what’s the problem with all these extra nutrients swilling around the coast? Nutrients help things to grow, isn’t that good? Unfortunately not.
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Three nutrients are fundamental to how ecosystems grow and function: nitrogen, phosphorus, and carbon. In the sea, nitrogen and phosphorus act as fertilisers but are naturally scarce and are the limiting nutrients that keep algal growth in check.
When nitrogen and phosphorus loads in the water increase, they trigger blooms of rapid algal growth. As the algae die, their decay depletes the surrounding water of oxygen. This is called eutrophication and it is a global problem.
An excess of organic carbon provides a feast for oxygen-hungry bacteria which compounds the problem further.
Salmon farms release nitrogen, phosphorus and organic carbon continuously and largely uncontrolled, with levels increasing every year. In the summer, salmon are fed more than twice as much as they are in the winter, creating a massive surge of nutrient waste in warming waters—exactly when lurv thrives.
Scientists have suspected for years that salmon farm waste harms Norway’s kelp forests, yet few studies have addressed the link. The expansion of the industry from small farms in sheltered fjords to larger farms in open, coastal locations where kelp forests thrive prompted a study in 2015 by NIVA and Institute of Marine Research (IMR). Overall, the scientists found less biodiversity and more lurv in kelp forests at sites with bigger farms and higher waste levels.
This was in August 2015. Since this study, the number of commercial licenses has grown, and annual averages of both nitrogen and phosphorus in salmon farm waste have risen by more than a third. A recent report from Havforskningsinstiuttet (Norway’s Institute of Marine Research) found that Norwegian fjords and coastal systems are increasingly vulnerable due to climate change, which reduces their ability to tolerate pollution from fish farming.
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Sunstone calculations show that the waste of uneaten feed from salmon farms added up to 63,871 tonnes in 2025.
Picture 4,500 commercial dump trucks backing up to the water’s edge and emptying their load of salmon feed directly into the fjords, one after another, year after year.
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In a damning audit of land facilities in 2025, the Environment Agency found that nine out of ten violated pollution regulations. Just weeks before, the government released a new White Paper proposing a complete overhaul of the framework monitoring open-net sea farms. At the core was a commitment to move the entire industry toward standardised national regulations based on actual environmental impact. Yet it remains to be seen how and when these rules will be enforced.
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Oxygen Crisis
I started when scientists wanted to find out how the amount of life-giving oxygen in the Norwegian fjords water has changed over time. For the Hardangerfjord, the County Governor searched all available archives for older hydrographic data in order to expand the ongoing monitoring programme. The result was a time series stretching back to 1955.The study produced a graph with a profile that looked like a slide in a children’s playground. This slide would be particularly thrilling to ride due to its angle. As you gather momentum through the 1970s, 80s and 90s, oxygen levels plummet. By the time you reach the present day, you’d be gasping for air.
“When I saw that graph, I was shocked”, says Tom N. Pedersen. It showed a one-third decrease in oxygen levels in the deeper parts of the fjord between 1955 and 2024. They now have two more years of monitoring showing the same trends.
The Hardangerfjord is Norway’s second longest fjord system, and is the region in Norway with the highest density of salmon farms.
The changes are also connected to climate change, whereby water exchange in fjord basins is weakened. When this coincides with increased discharges of nutrients from salmon farms, there is a clear correlation with reduced oxygen saturation in deeper water layers. …