Lerøy loses 490,000 young salmon to ‘water quality’ issues

The Lerøy Seafood group has been affected by another biological incident which has led to the death of almost half a million young salmon in Norway.

The deaths were reported at the Lerøy Sjøtroll facility at Kjærelva in Fitjar municipality in Sunnhordland.

They are thought to be due to poor water quality. Lerøy Sjøtroll said it is working with the Norwegian Food Safety Authority to establish exactly what has happened.

The number of smolt deaths is estimated at around 490,000.

The company issued a statement saying: “At the beginning of March, we had a demanding situation at our smolt facility Kjærelva in Fitjar municipality in Sunnhordaland. We suspect that there have been challenges with the water quality, and that this has unfortunately led to 490,000 smolts not surviving. In total, we had a stock of 1.9 million.

Morten Fjæreide, general manager of Lerøy Sjøtroll, added: “We immediately implemented measures and have moved the smolt into new vessels and a new water environment.

“We take this incident very seriously and have reported the matter to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority. Lerøy’s professionals collaborate with external knowledge communities to find the root cause.”

The Norwegian Food Safety Authority has said it will carry out inspections at the site.

The Lerøy group has been hit by a number of issues over the last few months. They include jellyfish attacks in late autumn last year and ISA problems around the same time. It has also had to deal with listeria problems at one of its seafood processing subsidiaries.

Lerøy’s Sjøtroll plant (photo: NLI)