It may still be summer – and a stiflingly hot one for much of Europe – but there has been no recess in the world of aquaculture over the past month.

Canadian owned Cooke Aquaculture has just agreed a deal to buy Australia’s Tassal for around £640 million, after its earlier bids for the company were rejected.

The move will increase New Brunswick-headquartered Cooke’s production from 115,000 tonnes to 155,000 tonnes a year, making it the world’s fifth biggest salmon farmer. Cooke, which has operations in north America, Scotland, and Chile, previously bid, unsuccessfully, for Australian salmon farmer Huon.

In other developments in the salmon sector, Norway’s Helge Gaso – who recently lost out to SalMar in a battle to control Norwegian aquaculture group NTS – announced the creation of a £1 billion fund to invest in coastal businesses, including aquaculture projects.

Gaso, who said he will now sell his shares in NTS, has attracted industry heavyweights such as former Mowi CEO Alf-Helge Aarskog to his Froy Kapital venture.

Mowi, meanwhile, is to sell its innovative offshore designs, the ‘Egg’’ and ‘the ‘Donut,’ to focus on its post-smolt programme. The Norwegian Fisheries Directorate gave Mowi licences to experiment with its floating fully-closed containment models, but the company has decided to abandon the novel concepts in favour of existing technology, Intrafish reported.

But other farmers continue to explore the potential of closed containment at sea. Norway headquartered Cermaq, owned by Mitsubishi, is preparing a second trial of its improved semi-closed containment system in British Columbia, where the Canadian government is pushing ahead with plans to transition from open net pen salmon farming.

Canadian fisheries minister Joyce Murray said future farming does not necessarily have to be land-based, as long as it minimises or removes interaction with wild salmon.

As the debate over the future of salmon farming in BC continues – with First Nations supportive of aquaculture demanding more time to shape the government’s ‘transition’ agenda – farmers on the east coast are looking to learn from Norway and Scotland.

Nova Scotia is considering adopting Norway’s traffic light licensing regulations, based on the sustainability of farming locations. And in St Johns, Newfoundland, delegates at Aquaculture Canada and WAS (World Aquaculture Society) North America 2022 heard from keynote speaker Tavish Scott, CEO of Salmon Scotland, on the importance of countering the pseudo-science of activists with facts.

‘We are also fortunate in Scotland that both governments [in London and Edinburgh] value the sector, the 12,000 jobs we support, and the huge economic contribution to the Scottish and UK economies,’ said Scott.

But Scottish farmers have endured problems of their own this summer, and the sector has urged the UK government to take action to support exports disrupted by cross-Channel delays.

Fresh salmon normally arrives in France from Scotland the following morning, but in recent weeks there have been delays of up to 48 hours due to queues on the UK side of the Channel, said Salmon Scotland.

The organisation has also highlighted a shortage of workers in the wake of Brexit. Scott wrote to both Tory leadership hopefuls, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, before they appeared at a hustings in Perth on August 16, asking them to embrace ‘a more enlightened approach to the movement of labour in the UK’.

And Scott raised concerns that changes to the Northern Ireland protocol could lead to further friction at the borders if the European Union retaliates.

Figures this month showed that Scottish salmon remained the UK’s biggest fresh food export in the first half of 2022, but the value of exports fell by 8% compared to the same period last year, with a 35% drop in the volume of fish exported.

Norway, however, increased its exports of salmon to the UK, as Scottish producers were unable to meet growing domestic demand.  Norway exported more than 35,000 tonnes of salmon to the UK in the first seven months of 2022, up by 18% year-on-year, according to the Norwegian Seafood Council.

In Chile, the new president, who has been critical of the country’s salmon farming industry, insisted he was not threatening salmon jobs. Gabriel Boric reserved his attacks for Nova Austral, which breached environmental standards in the Magallanes region. Boric has proposed a moratorium in some areas on new salmon concessions until the risk of damage to the seabed is assessed.

In other news, there were mixed fortunes for land-based farming. The CEO of Danish RAS (recirculating aquaculture system) specialist Billund said the sector is entering a new, more stable era.

Christian Sorensen, whose company has recently split from its Norwegian branch, told Intrafish there was a pipeline of more professional investors and owners, following a spate of grandiose proposals which have yet to materialise.

In July, English hedge fund Pelham Capital bought 11% of the shares in Atlantic Sapphire, its second purchase in the Miami based pioneer, making it the company’s second largest shareholder.

In California, planners backed Nordic Aquafarms’ 33,000-tonne RAS project, scheduled for Humboldt, in the north of the state. The company also has approval for a 33,000-tonne on-land salmon farm in Belfast, Maine.

But there has been local opposition to the land-based aquaculture revolution centred in Maine, and earlier this month both candidates in the race for governor denounced American Aquafarms’ long-running ambition to build a 30,000-tonne closed-containment farm in the state’s Acadia National Park.

On a happier note, Danish feed giant BioMar is to construct a new aquafeed plant in Iceland, in partnership with Icelandic fishing and processing company Síldarvinnslan, to supply the Icelandic aquaculture industry, which has grown tenfold since 2010.

The biggest shareholder in Síldarvinnsnan is Samherji, which plans a 40,000 tonnes-per-year on-land salmon farm next to the country’s Reykanes geothermal power plant, Fish Farming Expert reported.