Lerøy hit by new salmon escape incident

There were more problems for the Lerøy Seafood group today as the company found itself tackling a serious salmon escape.

It is feared that an estimated 14,000 fish have got out of a Lerøy Midt facility in the Hitra municipality.

The fish have an average weight of around seven kilos.

The company said it has rapidly managed to bring in extra resources to secure the site and recover as many escaped fish as possible.

Harald Larssen, general manager of Lerøy Midt said: “We have a good dialogue with the authorities including the Directorate of Fisheries and we are working closely with them to handle the situation in the most efficient way possible.”

Lerøy Midt has an emergency plan, which it says it was able to put into action. This included putting out recapture nets and more of these will be deployed later today.

Larssen added: that the company deeply regretted the incident.

He said: “This should not happen. We have a vision of zero escapes, and take this very seriously.

“Lerøy has its own environmental and safety group which has now started work to determine the cause of the escape. Our priority now is to limit the extent of the damage and learn from the incident to avoid future escapes.”

It has been a challenging few months for the Lerøy group which included a 5,000 fish escape at a Lerøy Midt site in February and the loss of fish to water quality issues, along with listeria problems.