Northcharr

Title: Sustainable Aquaculture of Arctic Charr

Summary: Arctic charr is a highly valued fish species in the Northern territory and in the Alps “Alpenlax” with a red delicious flesh and beautiful appearance. Arctic charr farming is still a small industry but with a potential to grow and to develop into a unique high quality product from the north. Farming this species requires access to cold fresh or brackish water. For this reason, the possibility of farming this species in Europe is largely restricted to rural areas in the northern periphery (NP).

Northern periphery fish farms therefore, have the opportunity to provide EU markets with a unique, high quality product while creating important job opportunities in rural areas. The annual production is currently relatively limited (to around 5000 tonnes per year), mainly in Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The interest in this northern fish species is increasing and the production will have to increase rapidly to meet the demands due to plans for marketing campaigns in Europe. This will require cooperation between charr farmers and other stakeholders. The participants in this project are either researchers or stakeholders of already ongoing projects focusing on Arctic charr and have participated in a pan-European network on Arctic charr, Charrnet.

In this NPP project, a holistic approach of our expertise and projects is taken to provide stakeholders in the Northern periphery with tools to strongly improve the development of Arctic charr production. We will specially focus on using sustainable ingredients in the fish feed for Arctic charr and developing welfare criteria for faring conditions and slaughter.

For more information, please visit EurOcean Knowledge Gate.