I’m trying to keep my balance on a floating plastic platform no more than a foot wide, a constant battering of wind, rain and waves ensuring there isn’t a single moment of flat footing, while an enthusiastic Norwegian is reeling off stats about the 20,000 fish swimming in a perpetual circle in the pen we’re teetering on the edge of. Every now and then, below the surface a flash of red streaks across the 20m-wide net. It’s an AI-powered laser shooting sea lice no larger than a centimetre long from the scales of the fish. Yes, you read that correctly.
This is a salmon farm owned by Nordic Blu, a family-run business that has been operating in the Skjerstad Fjord in northern Norway, just above the Arctic circle, since the early 1980s. The fjord looks as picturesque as any other – frighteningly dark water surrounded on all sides by jagged, forested mountains, all bathed in the eerie grey light of the midnight sun – but this one has a hidden talent that makes it uniquely suitable for a sustainable fish farm.
