Aller Aqua's production facility and headquarters in Denmark. The ruling is for its subsidiary in Norway.
Photo: Aller Aqua.
The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries (Fiskeridirektoratet, Fdir, in its Norwegian name and acronym) has announced in a release that the Sogn og Fjordane District Court, in Vestland county, has ruled in its favor on all essential points of its case against Aller Aqua Norway for a salmon escape in Sogn in October 2022.
Although it is not yet final, the feed company has been sentenced to pay a fine of NOK 2,700,000—less than the amount initially requested by the police after not being convicted of an extreme infraction—in addition to court costs amounting to NOK 100,000.
"It is a thorough ruling that establishes important principles in the supervisory and enforcement work we will carry out in the future. The company was not convicted of extreme infraction, and the fine has been reduced from NOK 4.5 million, but otherwise the ruling supports us on all points," said the Norwegian Director of Fisheries, Frank Bakke-Jensen.
"The case is also a good example of solid interdisciplinary cooperation between our departments and between us and the police," Bakke-Jensen added, commenting on the sentence. Previously, the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries' note said that the escape was reported to the police due to its serious nature.
A fish feed producer, Aller Aqua Norway has a sea facility in Vadheim, in the Sognefjord, for feed testing. It was from this site that about 35,000 salmon escaped during the loading of fish onto the combined wellboat and slaughter vessel 'Norwegian Gannet' on the night between October 28 and 29, 2022.
The inspection carried out by Fdir after the escape was reported revealed eleven irregularities, so the case was reported to the police for further investigation. The police imposed a fine of NOK 4,500,000 on the company, which Aller Aqua refused to accept, and the case was therefore taken to court.
According to the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries, the cause of the escape was a lack of risk assessment, weighting down, and inspection of the net during a high-risk work operation, which led to one of the propellers on the vessel 'Norwegian Gannet' pulling in the net on one of the cages and creating two large tears through which the salmon escaped.
Moreover, Fdir also said that some of the escaped fish were sick with pancreas disease (PD) and were sexually mature, posing a greater risk of harm than fish that were not, and that the fact that the escape occurred during the spawning season for wild salmon in a national salmon fjord also underscored the seriousness of the incident.
As mentioned above, the ruling is not yet final, as Aller Aqua Norway has 14 days from notification of the ruling to appeal, meaning that it is not yet legally binding.