MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Salmon Free Falklands fact-finding trip to the Faroe Islands

Salmon floating pens at sea where fish is grown

Salmon farming was once again a topic of conversation last week, both in Stanley and further afield in the Faroe Islands. A small delegation from Salmon Free Falklands recently spent a week in the Faroes, intent on gathering facts and figures, and listening to local expert opinions about the industry there.

Meetings were held with a wide range of people, from government officers and the non-government environmental organization (FNU), to individuals and professionals from the local community who had concerns about the impact that salmon farming is having on their islands.

Topics centred predominantly around the impacts of the industry on the Faroese environment and its economy, and how local communities have been affected.

Officers from the Faroese Environment Agency revealed that several fjords where salmon had previously been farmed, have now been deemed too polluted by salmon farm effluent to sustain the industry there, and that companies are forced to seek new sites that are ever farther out at sea, where the ocean currents are stronger.

Other impacts include sea lice, farmed salmon escapes, plastic debris and the use of chemicals. Interestingly, these issues featured in a Faroese one-hour documentary “Under the Salmon”, locally produced and aired on the Faroes’ leading broadcasting service, KVF, in 2018.

In discussions with a local economist, SFF learnt that although salmon farming in the Faroes provides jobs across the entire vertically integrated value chain from fishing for feed to company-owned airplanes flying fresh salmon directly to New York City, most of the profits from this multi-million pound industry go overseas to foreign shareholders.

The Faroes example is often held up as having the highest standards of industry regulation and environmental protection. Indeed FIG officers visited the Faroes in May this year, believing the Islands to be a ‘good comparator for the Falklands’.

The SFF visit revealed a different story.

Even in the Faroes – despite their much deeper fjords and stronger currents – it is not possible to farm salmon in open pens without producing, literally, tons of pollution. And with the majority of profits going overseas, we should be asking ourselves this question: why would we even contemplate farming an introduced non-native species to our waters?

A full report on the visit will be posted on www.salmonfreefalklands.org. The visit was entirely funded by local members of SFF

- The letter published in the Penguin News is signed by SFF