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Salmon farming next to submarine base

Salmon fish farming is a growing industry on Russia's Kola Peninsula. Photo: Trude Pettersen

The first smolt is set to the cages in the new fish farm in Ura bay on Russia’s Kola Peninsula.

Location

It is the company Russkoye More (Russian Sea) that has established the salmon fish farm with cages in the Ura bay, a coastal west of Murmansk that until now has exclusively used by the Northern fleet. Nuclear powered submarines are based in Vidyaevo, located on the west side of the fjord.

The base is most famous for being the home port of the ill-fated nuclear powered submarine Kursk that sank in the Barents Sea in August 2000.

Last Friday, the first 300,000 salmon smolt were put into the cages, RIA Novosti reports quoting Oleg Zabolotsky, chairman of the Regional Committee for Fisheries.

Both the equipment for the cages and feeding is imported from Norway.

Russkoye More last year won the tender for nine plots on the coast of the Kola Peninsula for salmon farming. The company plans to invest RUB 3 billion (€73.9 mill) in development of the plots, which have a potential of farming 30 000 tons of salmon per year.