Aquaculture, also known as aquafarming, is the controlled cultivation ("farming") of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, mollusks, algae and other organisms of value such as aquatic plants. Aquaculture involves cultivating freshwater, brackish water and saltwater populations under controlled or semi-natural conditions, and can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is the harvesting of wild fish. Aquaculture is also a practice used for restoring and rehabilitating marine and freshwater ecosystems. Mariculture, commonly known as marine farming, is aquaculture in seawater habitats and lagoons, as opposed to freshwater aquaculture. Pisciculture is a type of aquaculture that consists of fish farming to obtain fish products as food.
Fish farming or pisciculture involves commercial breeding of fish, most often for food, in fish tanks or artificial enclosures such as fish ponds. It is a particular type of aquaculture, which is the controlled cultivation and harvesting of aquatic animals such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and so on, in natural or pseudo-natural environments. A facility that releases juvenile fish into the wild for recreational fishing or to supplement a species' natural numbers is generally referred to as a fish hatchery. Worldwide, the most important fish species produced in fish farming are carp, catfish, salmon and tilapia.
Frøya is the westernmost municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is part of the Fosen region and consists of the island of Frøya, which lies north of the island of Hitra, as well several thousand other small islands surrounding the island of Frøya. The village of Sistranda is the administrative center of Frøya. Other villages include Hammarvika, Titran, Sula, and Mausund. The main island of Frøya is connected to the neighboring island of Hitra by the Frøya Tunnel which goes under the Frøyfjorden.
The Norwegian Coast Guard is a maritime military force which is part of the Royal Norwegian Navy. The coast guard's responsibility are for fisheries inspection, customs enforcement, border control, law enforcement, shipping inspection, environmental protection, and search and rescue. It operates throughout Norway's 2,385,178-square-kilometer (920,922 sq mi) exclusive economic zone (EEZ), internal waters and territorial waters. It is headquartered at Sortland Naval Base. In 2013 the Coast Guard had 370 employees, including conscripts, and a budget of 1.0 billion Norwegian krone.
Mowi ASA, formerly known as Marine Harvest ASA, , is a Norwegian seafood company with operations in a number of countries around the world. The company's primary interest is fish farming, primarily salmon, the operations of which are focused on Norway, Scotland, Canada, the Faroe Islands, Ireland and Chile. The group has a share of 25 to 30% of the global salmon and trout market, making it the world's largest company in the sector. Mowi also owns a 'value added processing' unit, which prepares and distributes a range of seafood products, and a number of smaller divisions.
Cermaq is a company which farms salmon and trout in Norway, Canada, Chile and Scotland. In 2017 the farming business had sales of around USD 1,1 billion, and a total sales volume of 157,800 tonnes. Cermaq is a fully owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation. The company has its headquarters in Oslo, Norway.
Lerøy Seafood Group ASA is a seafood production and distribution company based in Bergen, Norway
Grieg Group is a family-owned business headquartered in Bergen, Norway.
Grieg Seafood is an international seafood company with fish farms in Rogaland and Finnmark in Norway, British Columbia and Shetland. The company specializes in fresh Atlantic salmon. It has an annual production of 80,000 tonnes of salmon and trout. The company is based in Bergen, Norway, and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Marine Farms ASA is a Norwegian fish farming company. Based in Bergen, it operates salmon farms in the United Kingdom and Spain, through the subsidiaries Lakeland and Culmarex, respectively. It also holds investments in Belize and Vietnam. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.
Aquaculture started to take off in New Zealand in the 1980s. It is dominated by mussels, oysters and salmon. In 2007, aquaculture generated about NZ$360 million in sales on an area of 7,700 hectares. $240 million was earned in exports.
Aquaculture in Australia is the country's fastest-growing primary industry, accounting for 34% of the total gross value of production of seafood. 10 species of fish are farmed in Australia, and production is dominated by southern bluefin tuna, Atlantic salmon and barramundi. Mud crabs have also been cultivated in Australia for many years, sometimes leading to over-exploitation. Traditionally, this aquaculture was limited to table oysters and pearls, but since the early 1970s, there has been significant research and commercial development of other forms of aquaculture, including finfish, crustaceans, and molluscs.
The aquaculture of salmonids is the farming and harvesting of salmonid fish under controlled conditions for both commercial and recreational purposes. Salmonids, along with carp and tilapia, are the three most important fish groups in aquaculture. The most commonly commercially farmed salmonid is the Atlantic salmon.
Offshore aquaculture, also known as open water aquaculture or open ocean aquaculture, is an emerging approach to mariculture where fish farms are positioned in deeper and less sheltered waters some distance away from the coast, where the cultivated fish stocks are exposed to more naturalistic living conditions with stronger ocean currents and more diverse nutrient flow. Existing "offshore" developments fall mainly into the category of exposed areas rather than fully offshore. As maritime classification society DNV GL has stated, development and knowledge-building are needed in several fields for the available deeper water opportunities to be realized.
Nesskip hf. is an Icelandic shipping company that runs affreightment services based in Reykjavík. The company was established on 27 January 1974 in Seltjarnarnes and was founded by a group of shipping and bulk transport enthusiasts, led by Captain Gudmundur Asgeirsson, who was the first managing director of the company. It is one of Iceland's largest bulk transporting firms. According to Bloomberg it "provides a range of shipping-related services as ship owners, ship brokers, port agents, and transport and chartering consultants", and serves "cruise liners, seismic-research vessels, reefers, tankers, and dry cargo vessels and foreign deep sea fishing ships" as a port agent. The company Nesskip is valued at approximately 240 Million Norwegian krones (KON); approximately US$23 million. Nesskip purchased its first bulk carrier in February 1974, named the Suðurland and specialises in bulk transport of goods which has been at the fore front of the company's operations for over 40 years. The company deals with the transportation of fishmeal, steel products, construction materials, cement, timber, pumice, coal, gravel, ferrosilicon, and salt as well as other FOSFA cargo. In 1977, Nesskip began to develop a close working relationship with the company Wilson ASA, who specialise in the management of shipping services. It is a member of the international shipping organisation Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO). In 2006, Norwegian shipping company Wilson EuroCarriers acquired a majority share (51.6%) in Nesskip resulting in a change of ownership.
Loch Duart is a small, independent Scottish salmon farming company. It is headquartered in Scourie, Sutherland in north-west Scotland and has just over 100 employees. The company owns and operates eight sea sites and two hatcheries in Sutherland and the Outer Hebrides. Sales, marketing and finance departments are located in Montrose and a French sales and marketing office in Lorient, Brittany.
Gustav Magnar Witzøe is a Norwegian billionaire and significant shareholder of salmon fish farming company SalMar ASA. He is one of the youngest billionaires in the world, his father having made him SalMar's main shareholder for inheritance tax purposes when he was 18.
Aquaculture in the United Kingdom is dominated by salmon farming, then by mussel production with trout being the third most important enterprise. Aquaculture in the United Kingdom represents a significant business for the UK, producing over 200,000 tonnes of fish whilst earning over £700 million in 2012 (€793 million).
Horizon Arctic is an anchor handling tug supply vessel (AHTS) completed in 2016 by Vard Group at its Brattvåg shipyard as Bourbon Arctic for Bourbon Offshore Norway AS, part of the Marseille-based Bourbon group. As of 2023, it is operated by Horizon Maritime of Canada. Under Horizon, it served as the surface support vessel for the Titan submersible during its 2021 and 2022 survey expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic, conducted by OceanGate.
