On the edge of a hill sprinkled with sheep, above a quiet two-lane highway, sits the smolt site for HiddenFjord fish farm. The group of small warehouses overlooks a picturesque inlet, bordered by hills, waterfalls and rolling clouds. A nice view, but nothing unusual for the Faroe Islands.
Inside one warehouse are three water-filled concrete tanks, each about 15 feet in diameter. It’s quiet, save for the muffled hum of engines pumping oxygen into the water. The millions of salmon that pass through these tanks each year, swimming and eating at all hours, leave the air with a distinctly earthy smell.
Fish-farming companies such as HiddenFjord, in the town of Sørvágur, are the lifeblood of the Faroe Islands, a small nation in the North Atlantic Ocean halfway between Iceland and Norway. In a given year, fish may make up to 96 percent of the country’s exports. Many Faroese salmon are destined for fine restaurants in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Russia.
But the fishing industry in the Faroe Islands faces a serious threat — one that, in just 30 minutes, could cost a fish-farming business about $3 million and years of production: power blackouts.
“If the main [electricity] net is down and the generator system is not working, we are in big trouble,” says Roi Joensen, a technical manager at HiddenFjord. Without electricity to power the pumps that feed oxygen into the salmon tanks, the fish start to die off. The longer the power is out, the more fish die.
