Atlantic salmon is one of aquaculture species with the largest production by value around the world according to the data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The production of Atlantic salmon began from 1960s in Norway. After about 60 years, current Norway has become a leading country in salmon farming worldwide, and held various regulation including farming license, the maximum allowed biomass (MAB), traffic lights. The paper aims to systematically review the important advancements in the production of Atlantic salmon in Norway, and make recommendations for future development of Chinese aquaculture industry. According to the statistics number published by FAO, Norway produced 123.4 million tons of slaughtered Atlantic salmon in 2017, accounting for about 54.9% of production volume in world total, and 61.635 billion NOK by value. 10 global companies, including Salmar, Cermaq, and Marine Harvest, have produced 63.9% of the Norwegian production of Atlantic salmon. According to the prediction from Norsk Industry Alliance, the Norwegian Atlantic salmon production will achieve over 200 billion NOK in 2030, and 300 billion NOK in 2050, by solving the problems of sea lice, escaped fish and recycle of fish feces. In 2017, there were 986 sea farming sites, and 7 499 employees working on salmon farming in Norway. A typical procedure of land-ocean relay farming mode can be found in Norwegian salmon raising. During the first year, fish eggs are fertilized, and then the fishes can grow to 100 grams in land-based freshwater supported by a recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) facility. Subsequently, the fishes are transferred to sea farming sites, where they will be raised to about 4-5 kg per fish in the sea cage. In each sea site, there are normally 6-10 sea cages with the diameter of 50-200 m and the depth of 20-50 m, indicating the high-density culture of 25 kg/m3 when harvesting. Finally, one floating platform that people can live on can be set near the sea cages, to monitor the sea water quality and fish behavior in real time. Commercial working ship can also provide essential services to farmers, such as fish harvesting, fish transfer, and net cleaning. In order to protect the ecological environment of sea fields, the regulation that approved by Norwegian government requires: 1) the distance between sea sites must be larger than 1 km, 2) the distance between sea site and land-based raising facility must be larger than 3 km, and 3) the farming period cannot be longer than two years. With the deterioration of global warming and inshore water quality, it is demanding for more and more operation and management in salmon production. Norwegian salmon farming is now changing from open net cages to closed containment system, from inshore to offshore. In China, sea fish production began at 1980s for 40 years, and the technology and whole industry chain have been fast developed. The total production of sea fish has achieved 1 400 kt with the total value of 65-70 billion Yuan in 2018. Compared with Norwegian production of Atlantic salmon, there are some big challenges for China’s to achieve high efficiency of enterprise organization, much more variety of fish species and promising faming mode. In this broad overview of Norwegian Atlantic salmon industry, some recommendations can be made for the future aquaculture industry in China. Four suggestions are: 1) To improve access requirements of fish farming, and strengthen process supervision and environmental assessment; 2) to set different development strategy for different species; 3) to introduce advanced system of fish fry production; 4) to accelerate the research on offshore farming facility and land-sea faming mode. © 2020, Editorial Department of the Transactions of the Chinese Society of Agricultural Engineering. All right reserved.
