https://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ny-chlorine-leak-kills-thousands-salmon-arctic-norway-grieg-seafood-20210810-4rqo5ijc2rbfdoj7chbcdsjzwy-story.html
Chlorine leak kills nearly 100,000 salmon in Arctic Norway
A chlorine leak at a fish slaughterhouse killed about 96,000 salmon Tuesday in Arctic Norway, a local seafood company said.
Grieg Seafood said the leak happened in one of its tanks in the northern town of Alta, sending 4,000 gallons of chlorine into a nearby fjorn. The thousands of salmon, weighing more than 400 tons, were in a waiting cage at the time, according to the company.
“This is very sad,” said Stine Torheim, manager of the harvesting plant.
The chlorine is used to disinfect the processing water at the harvesting plant after the slaughtering, a method the company said is in accordance with Norwegian food safety and environmental regulations.
The environmental impact of the mass salmon deaths is still unclear. An outside firm has been asked to assess the damage, according to Grieg Seafood.
The company also said it was investigating what caused the leak and how it can prevent it from happening again.
“Our focus is now first and foremost on cleaning up,” Torheim said in a statement. “We will get all facts about this incident on the table, to ensure that it will not happen again.”
Police confirmed on Twitter that “significant quantities” of salmon were killed and that the leaked fluid flowed into the Atlantic Ocean. Authorities said there was no risk of any toxic chlorine gas affecting land.
The leak also did not cause any harm to employees or other people.
Grieg Seafood has farmed salmon for almost three decades and calls itself one of the world’s leading salmon farming companies. It has farms in Norway, Canada and the U.K.