How we reduce escapes

At Mowi, we are committed to achieving a zero-fish-escape target. Escape incidents are very rare during a production cycle; however, due to unforeseen factors, fish may escape from our farming facilities. Salmon escapes are most commonly caused by severe weather, structural issues at farming sites, and human error. It is therefore critical that all of Mowi’s farming operations are risk assessed to minimise any potential for such events to occur. 

Escaped farmed fish can impact biodiversity. While scientific evidence indicates a low genetic risk to wild salmon in the unlikely event of an escape, we acknowledge our responsibility to minimise any interaction between wild and farm-raised fish. Mowi seeks to ensure no negative biodiversity impact and therefore has a policy in place to minimise the risk of escape incidents. Fish escapes are governed by our sustainability strategy, Leading the Blue Revolution, and the sustainability governance policy.

Mowi’s business units in different localities have different standards, all of which ensure that installations used for aquaculture are correctly manufactured, installed, operated, and maintained to prevent escapes. Mowi operates to ensure the escape-proof design and operation of our sites, with every site having a site-specific escape mitigation plan that is known to all site employees. In the event of an escape, all equipment must be immediately inspected to determine the cause of the incident and repaired or rectified to prevent further escapes.

Continuous R&D efforts prioritise testing farming equipment under severe weather conditions, and this work is completed alongside our suppliers. Mowi strives always to use best-in-class equipment across all sites and continuously refine our operational procedures, main equipment types, and support technologies in line with new knowledge, improved analytical tools, and rapid technological advancement. Working alongside our suppliers to ensure resilient equipment, Mowi implements technical requirements for our farming operations to prevent escapes.

All employees who work with live fish must also undergo escape-prevention training annually. All site personnel are trained in Mowi’s Farming Excellence Programme – Zero Escape – and we have established a Global Escape Action Group to define key improvement priorities, track progress, and share lessons learned to ensure fish escapes are avoided at all costs. If any escape incidents occur, all are tracked and investigated for the cause of the incident for information sharing and learning.

Mowi continuously seeks areas for improvement to achieve our target of zero escapes and ensure sustainable coexistence between aquaculture and the marine environment. Our priorities going forward to reduce the number of escape incidents include:

• Strengthening collaboration and training with equipment and service suppliers
• Improving our training programmes to minimise human error, ensuring that best practices for critical operations are followed
• Implementing anti-fouling strategies that reduce the need for net cleaning
• Working with wild fisheries associations on genetic introgression studies to better understand current levels of hybridisation and possible impacts on recipient wild populations

As a global company, we are committed to achieving zero escape incidents and consistently uphold responsible operations to proactively reduce all associated risks.