Feb. 11 (UPI) — A seafood company that lost about 27,000 salmon from a fish farm off the coast of Norway is offering a bounty of about $45 per fugitive fish caught.
Mowi, the world’s largest producer of farmed salmon, said about a quarter of its 105,000 salmon escaped Sunday night from a fish farm in Troms and entered the waters of northwest Norway.
The company said the fence separating the farm from open waters was damaged by stormy weather in the area.
The company called on registered fishing professionals in the country to bring any of the fugitive salmon caught to designated “reception centers,” where they will be paid about $45 per fish.
Vegard Oen Hatten of the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries said companies are normally only allowed to conduct recapture operations within 1,640 feet of their facilities, but Mowi was ordered to expand the range of its search for the missing salmon due to the massive scale of the escape.
Experts said the escaped fish could pose a major risk to wild salmon in the area. They said the escaped salmon compete for the same spawning grounds and could spread infections such as sea lice.
Experts also said studies have found interbreeding between wild and captive salmon leads to offspring with a much lower survival rate.
