As per the information available world salmon production shrank more than 10 percent in 2010 on lackluster pink salmon landings in Russia; farming share in total production showed a recovery to 70 percent. The world’s production of salmon and trout in 2010 stayed at about 2.7 million tons, more than 10 percent less than the previous year, against the backdrop of lackluster pink salmon landings in Russia and slumping catch of fall chum in Japan.
Experts believe that the reduction was more tended on wild salmon, the proportion of farmed salmon production in 2010 recovered to 70.0 percent of the total global output. The production of salmon last year is estimated to have aggregated 2,736,800 tons on a round fish basis – 821,400 tons of wild salmon and 1,915,400 tons of farmed salmon. This marked a drop of 11.5 percent from the all-time high production of 3.09 million tons in 2009.
The decline was mainly due to drastic decrease of Russian pink salmon landings to less than one third of the preceding season. The 2010 season fell on the poor harvest year in a clear contrast to the unprecedented strong catch in the 2009 season. In the United States as well, salmon production shrank on the whole as pink salmon landings in the major fishing ground of Southeastern area of Alaska were sluggish, although those in Prince William Sound saw a robust performance.
In the area of farming, no drastic changes were found in production on the whole in 2010. The output of trout in Norway, the largest producing country in the world, dwindled, while production of Atlantic salmon in Chile remained more or less on the same level as the previous year. Experts said that the production in next year will be even larger from mid-2012 because of the prospective effects of vaccination against infectious salmon anemia (ISA) virus.
