Under the Surface - Kjersti Sandvik, Gyldendal Norway, Updated April 28, 2016

A new book on the fish farm industry in Norway is out in 2016 from Kjersti Sandvik, published by Gyldendal. Sandvik has worked as a fish farm journalist for many years in Norway, and after a long hard look, she has come to the conclusion that there needs to be changes in the country where fish farms are from - Norway.

I doubt Norwegians realize just how bad a name they are getting around the globe for their unsustainable, environmentally damaging industry they are taking everywhere they can for the sake of shareholders only. People who have to live with Norwegian fish farms come to overwhelmingly reject them. 

Norwegians need to wake up that these 'farms' need to be put on land, and to get on with the rest of the world now grappling with climate change rather than polluting the world's oceans and increasing the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous loading of the most important creator of oxygen that everything on earth depends on. The world needs to say no to movement offshore where no one can keep tabs on Norwegian fish farms. They need to be on land.

In what I have read so far of Sandvik's text - a Google translation - because there is no English translation at the moment - is fair. Do read this. I will have more to say as I read the book.

Do note that at this time, Norway is moving to get fish farms out of the water by offering them a $9- to $ 12-million dollar subsidy in the form of a free license for on land farms. The auction price for an in-ocean license comprises the hefty fee that is foregone. 

Here is the beginning of the book [my boldfacing]. Please note that while this starts slowly it becomes riveting for those of us in the press and fish farm world. The history of fish farming in Norway, right from the beginning has the same problems it does right now, decades later: boom bust industry, mountains of money, high stakes speculation, huge growth, huge catastrophes, diseases, workers getting laid off, bankruptcies, bureaucracy failures, government business conflict of interest, fish 'iceberg' protectionism, fraud, corruption, arguments with the EU and USA governments, tariff to 26%, the realization that there was more money in fish farm feed than the total transport of grain for human consumption in Europe. And it goes on. 

Go to my post on the News Bites problems in fish farms/seafood industry around the globe - more than 400 in less than a year. I think you will be taken aback: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2015/07/key-document-fish-farm-news-bites.html. 

Read and stay tuned:

Under the Surface - Kjersti Sandvik

CONTENTS

Preface 9

PART I : Adventure champions 13

PART II : Adventure losers 73

PART III : Solution or problem 201

Conclusion 244

PREFACE

Norway is the world's largest producer of Atlantic salmon. Farmed salmon is our ikea, our Ibérico ham, our champagne. Salmon is the only people in faraway countries associate with Norway. The industry produces over 1.3 million tonnes of salmon a year, which is 14 million meals each today sent out to 100 different countries. farmed salmon creates jobs and optimism in rural areas and gives money to the Treasury. If everything goes as planned, production will be increased fivefold by 2050. These are the good version, the story industry itself and politicians likes to tell us. But there is a more nuanced version. We have an industry that is more keen to talk out of environmental problems than to solve them, an industry meetings criticism "either you are with us or you are against us" and accusing all critics to be driven by "oppdrettshat ".

Despite major unresolved environmental problems have we an industry and a government that will have more growth. The premise is clear: The salmon industry will grow and be one of the country's economic mainstays when oil and gas it ends. Some environmental problems, disease and emissions is a reality, but why be so negative, why not just pushing them below the surface and give the industry deserved applause?

As I worked on this book, it became increasingly clearer to me that the authorities have been too cautious to set standards for the industry. Industry associations - As Seafood Norway, formerly the fisheries Norwegian Seafood Federation (FHL), and Norwegian Seafood Association (NSL) - have been important forerunners. For them, environmental hinder growth. Salmon farming adds increasingly occupy commons along the coast. New environmental problems occur, they require

new treatments which could be harmful environment. Shellfish door, wild fish are inedible, sea fishermen are in danger of losing livelihood and other fish species are threatened. The willingness to admit problems and do something about them on hold. When scientists cannot put two hyphens the answer to how much farmed sea environment resistant, used this research-based uncertainty for all theis worth and misinterpreted where possible. Should industry be controlled for the best available scientific knowledge, or by the industry's need for growth and desire speculation about how little they affect the environment? There has been too much of lately. It is so easy to criticize the aquaculture industry, I get hear. Come with me solutions, not more criticism.

My impression is the opposite. The simplest is to cheer industry. Allow it to hear what it most wants to hear. Breeding represents the future. Farmed salmon is Norway gift to the world. If there were a sulky rich man fly fisherman in a river and complaints, we must ask ourselves: What is most important? Obtaining food to the world, or to make sure the hobby fisherman gets a

salmon on the hook? Yes, we have indeed some challenges with lice resistance to treatment lotions, residues of toxic delousing agents, drug residues and large quantities of fish dirt that goes right into the sea, but the challenges we will soon get rid of, is the slogan.

In the environmental debate has climate skeptics. In aquaculture we find environmental skeptics who internalises the knowledge that after all there is. The rhetorical grips coincide. The changes in the environment might as well due to natural fluctuations, or unknown, natural conditions there must be more research on. Other industries are much worse than us, and how should we produce more food in the future if not in the ocean? I have no other motives for writing this book than pointing out what I mean driver industry in the wrong direction. Shall This remains an important industry in the future, and it should it be, production must take place in a different way than Today. That is more environmentally friendly solutions. the public Measures must be tighter. Politicians and public management must hear more on independent researchers than on industry's own lobbyists.