From Tromsø we next called upon Sortland. Once again, the Silver Dawn is the largest object to been seen.
Across the fjord was a salmon farm. The weather was a bit drizzly and the bus took an hour, even tho we could almost see the farm from the ship. Here they gave us warm fishing overalls and took us to the fish! They had a few boats designed to ferry people, so they obviously have been doing this “fish tourists” things for a while.
They manage Atlantic Salmon in three 130 meter circumference floating cages that went 50 meters deep. Rules require that no more that 2 1/2 % of volume within the cages be bio-mass (fish), but even then they can hold up to 200,000 fish. The fish are grown from 1/2 kg to three kg here, taking about 1.5 years.
They were feeding the salmon while we were there. A separate “barge” pumps in the food pellets and the fish were jumping all about to feed.
Back at the buildings they monitor cameras installed in each cage. If any food starts making it down a few meters it means the fish are no longer eating and they stop adding more food. Our guide said the fish needed 1 1/2 kg of food to add 1 kg of mass, which is much more efficient than mammals, as fish are not warm blooded. The cages are rotated around the fjord every year, kind of like how land farmers rotate crop land. There are the occasional parasite, but they have underwater lasers that identify the parasites and zap them off!
Including other sites, there are 50 such cages in the Sortland area. There are over 450 such sites across northern Norway.
After the tour we returned to eat smoked salmon and then walked thru their little educational museum. They had a movie that showed the consolidated factory that breeds the salmon before they come to the farm and also the inspection and packaging facility used after the farm. Norway produces over 170 tons of salmon per day!
The reason I do these cruises is to learn new stuff, so this tour fit the bill. However, the surrounding landscape tops it off.
I tried a fancy sun-and-clouds panorama shot. I don’t think it really worked.
We start heading back to Copenhagen now, with a few stops on the way. We will go thru some weather after leaving Sortland. Hopefully this ship doesn’t feature in the world news…