The report, titled “Blue Empire,” was produced with other organizations including Greenpeace Africa and The West African Association for the Development of Artisanal Fishing and published in January. It quantifies the use of fishmeal and fish oil imported from Mauritania, Senegal and the Gambia in the production of feed for salmon farms in Norway, the world’s main producer of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar).

According to the report, in 2020, Norwegian salmon farms required almost 2 million metric tons of edible wild fish to produce fish oil intended for feeds that produced nearly 1.5 million metric tons of farmed salmon.

Up to 7% of these wild fish (123,000-144,000 metric tons) were small pelagic species caught along the coasts of West Africa, where they could have fed between 2.5 million and 4 million people, according to the report. Other major suppliers of fish oil to Norway are Denmark, the United States, Peru and Iceland. The NGO based its calculations on public commercial data and company reports by the four companies that together supply close to 100% of the feed used in Norwegian salmon farming: Mowi, Dutch-owned Skretting, U.S.-based Cargill and Denmark-based BioMar.

The Resource Centre invited the four companies to comment on the issue. While Skretting responded to the invitation stating that their sourcing policy " is to only buy marine raw materials from whole fish that are either certified (MSC or MarinTrust) or subject to a Fishery Improvement Project (FIP)", Mowi, Cargill and BioMar declined to comment.