“Our exports surged from $500,000 in 2017 to $86 million last year, and this is just the beginning,“ said Denizer, general manager of Polifish, one of the Black Sea’s main producers of what is marketed as “Turkish salmon”.
Last year, the country exported more than 78,000 tonnes of trout raised in its cooler northern Black Sea waters, a figure 16 times higher than in 2018.
Russia, which banned Norwegian salmon in 2014 after the West imposed sanctions over its annexation of Crimea, accounts for 74.1 percent of “Turkish salmon” exports, followed by Vietnam with 6.0 percent, and then Belarus, Germany and Japan.
Stale Knudsen, an anthropologist at Norway’s Bergen University and a specialist on Black Sea fishing, said Russia offered “an available market that was easy to access, near Turkey”.
Turkish producers have also benefitted from the country’s large number of reservoirs where the fish are a raised for several months before being transferred to the Black Sea.
Last, but not least, is the price.
“The species may be different but in terms of taste, colour and flesh quality, our fish is superior to Norwegian salmon, according to our Japanese clients,“ Kobya told AFP at Akerko’s headquarters near the northeastern town of Trabzon, where a Turkish flag flies alongside those of Russia and Japan.
- Disease risks -
“I think the rationale behind that is not only to become more sustainable, but is more importantly a strategy to try to enter the European markets... where the Norwegians have some kind of control,“ he said.
Pointing to the “spread of diseases” and “improper breeding management”, the researchers found that nearly 70 percent of the trout were dying prematurely.
“When the fish are small, their immune systems aren’t fully working,“ said its deputy general manager Talha Altun.
“In our Black Sea cages, the mortality rate is lower than five percent, but these are farming operations and anything can happen,“ Kobya said.
Visible from the shore, the fish farms have attracted the wrath of local fishermen worried about the cages, which have a 50-metre (165-foot) diameter, being set up where they cast their nets to catch anchovy, mackerel and bonito.
“The cages block the movement of the fish and what happens then? The fish start leaving the area,“ he said, accusing the trout farmers of pumping chemicals into their “fake fish”.
“If the fish leave, our boats will end up going to rack and ruin in our ports,“ he warned.
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