Norway revives risk breed species bid

Oslo, Sept. 3: Norway is relaunching cod farms in Europe’s ice-cold northern waters after mass escapes and failure to thrive condemned its earlier attempt to become the first country to try largescale breeding of a species declining in the wild.

The handful of companies raising Atlantic cod in pens in Norwegian fjords say they have learned lessons from a wave of bankruptcies of cod farms earlier in the millennium as well as the success of Norway’s multibillion-dollar salmon business. They are hoping to emulate that success with cod at a time when wild Atlantic cod are seeing mixed fortunes.

While stocks off Iceland and in the Barents Sea are sustainable, those off Canada, the US, Ireland and Britain are low, as are those in the Baltic Sea and the non-British part of the North Sea. Norcod, the biggest of the new farms, is raising 1.8 million fish along the craggy Norwegian seacoast and plans to begin sales in the second quarter of 2021. “We are targeting northern and western Europe first,” said Christian Riber, Norcod’s commercial director.