Iceland fish farming up, but so are disease problems
Total aquaculture production in Iceland continued to surge last year, but the industry was beset by a number of biological problems, says the country’s Veterinary Association for fish diseases.
Iceland fish farm scene
Output totalled 64,417 tons of which 54,53 tons came from sea cage farming and 9,782 tons from land farming – a combined increase of 17.6% on 2024.
The report says that 2025 was hit by a number of challenges in the sea-farming sector.
The most significant of these was the lice problem in the Westfjords, in addition to confirmed cases of bacterial kidney disease (BKD) which was associated with increased mortality in some farming areas.
The mortality was recorded in sea-farming at 2.3 million salmon in the Eastfjords and over 2.4 million in the Westfjords. This was in addition to hundreds of thousands of fish being discarded in both parts of the country.
There was extensive screening during the year. A total of 16,336 samples were taken for notifiable diseases in land-based and sea-based aquaculture.
However, no samples tested positive for the pathogenic variant of the ISA virus, ISA HPR-del, while 30 samples tested positive for the non-pathogenic variant ISA-HPR0.
In addition, 85 samples were tested positive for BKD and three samples were tested positive for abalone wilt.
The association said salmon lice and fish lice remained a persistent challenge in the Westfjords.
During the year, 13 chemical treatments against lice and 19 mechanical treatments with warm water and rinsing were carried out.
In addition, 453,000 eggs were transferred to four farming areas in the Westfjords as part of preventive lice management.
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