Chilean firm to develop offshore salmon farms

Acuicola Tripanko, a Chilean company, has started to develop a project to farm salmon offshore in the south of Chiloe Island in the 10th Region.

A new system for deep-water salmon farming will be built, and the project will have large rafts anchored off the coast of Chile with Atlantic salmon at great depths.

The salmon farm complex includes six open ocean feeding centres and covers a total of 1,300 hectares in the region of Punta Olleta (Region X), which has suffered in the recent industry crisis.

Norwegian banks have invested nearly US$30 million in the project and proposals for the projects have been submitted for an environmental impact assessment.

The deep sea operations use copper mesh cages, which could help avoid disease outbreaks due to strong sea currents and antibacterial properties of the cages. Similar systems exist in Alaska, Canada, Scotland and Norway.