On 28 May 1970, brothers Ove and Sivert Grøntvedt lowered 20,000 young salmon into a basic floating net pen off the coast of Hitra. It was an experiment born from stubborn coastal optimism, and it worked. In 1971, they harvested the world's first successfully farmed generation of Atlantic salmon. No one at the time could have guessed that this small pen would spark an industry that now provides 14 million meals a day worldwide.
Growth was explosive. Production rose from 500 tonnes in 1970 to 8,000 by 1980 and 170,000 by 1990, roughly 40 percent growth every year in the early decades. A 1973 aquaculture law ensured that benefits would spread along the coast rather than concentrating in a few hands, which is why Hitra and neighbouring Frøya remain heartland salmon country to this day. By the mid-1980s, farms stretched from Rogaland in the south to Finnmark in the north.
One of the industry's most unexpected chapters was Project Japan in 1986, when Norwegian pioneer Thor Listhaug set out to double salmon exports to Japan. His team introduced raw Norwegian salmon into Japanese sushi culture, a pairing that had never existed before. Within 20 years, exports to Japan grew from 2 tonnes to 40,000 tonnes. Salmon sushi is, improbably, a Norwegian invention.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and fears of a global food crisis spread, the Norwegian seafood industry pointed out a striking fact: the salmon swimming in Norwegian fish farms at any given time is enough to give every Norwegian one salmon meal a day for up to three years. Norway exports 95 percent of its seafood, and the sheer volume is staggering. The catch is that almost all feed ingredients are imported, with essential nutrients coming from as far away as China, so the farms depend on the same global supply lines a crisis would threaten.
Today, SalMar on neighbouring Frøya is the world's second-largest salmon farmer. In 2017, they launched Ocean Farm 1, the world's first semi-submersible offshore fish farm: a 7,000-tonne cage 110 metres in diameter, holding up to 1.5 million salmon, operated remotely from shore. It sits visible off the coast of Frøya, a floating symbol of how far one experiment with a net pen has come. Norway produces more than half the world's farmed Atlantic salmon, and it all started here.
Growth was explosive. Production rose from 500 tonnes in 1970 to 8,000 by 1980 and 170,000 by 1990, roughly 40 percent growth every year in the early decades. A 1973 aquaculture law ensured that benefits would spread along the coast rather than concentrating in a few hands, which is why Hitra and neighbouring Frøya remain heartland salmon country to this day. By the mid-1980s, farms stretched from Rogaland in the south to Finnmark in the north.
One of the industry's most unexpected chapters was Project Japan in 1986, when Norwegian pioneer Thor Listhaug set out to double salmon exports to Japan. His team introduced raw Norwegian salmon into Japanese sushi culture, a pairing that had never existed before. Within 20 years, exports to Japan grew from 2 tonnes to 40,000 tonnes. Salmon sushi is, improbably, a Norwegian invention.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and fears of a global food crisis spread, the Norwegian seafood industry pointed out a striking fact: the salmon swimming in Norwegian fish farms at any given time is enough to give every Norwegian one salmon meal a day for up to three years. Norway exports 95 percent of its seafood, and the sheer volume is staggering. The catch is that almost all feed ingredients are imported, with essential nutrients coming from as far away as China, so the farms depend on the same global supply lines a crisis would threaten.
Today, SalMar on neighbouring Frøya is the world's second-largest salmon farmer. In 2017, they launched Ocean Farm 1, the world's first semi-submersible offshore fish farm: a 7,000-tonne cage 110 metres in diameter, holding up to 1.5 million salmon, operated remotely from shore. It sits visible off the coast of Frøya, a floating symbol of how far one experiment with a net pen has come. Norway produces more than half the world's farmed Atlantic salmon, and it all started here.