Norwegian salmon farmer SalMar has applied for a license from the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries for the first-ever salmon production site in the open opean.

The 19,000-metric-ton facility is modeled on the company's Smart FishFarm (SFF) concept, for which it received eight development permits in 2019.

Specially designed for the open sea, Salmar's 70-meter high, deepwater cage can hold twice as much fish as Salmar's existing Ocean Farm sea cage, with the capacity to produce three million salmon in its eight production chambers.

The site will allow for the treatment of salmon against lice and disease in closed systems and will be equipped with a closed, load-bearing center column, which will form part of the facility's control unit and research laboratory.

In 2019, the Directorate of Fisheries mapped and identified in collaboration with the Institute of Marine Research areas that may be suitable for aquaculture production at sea.

The site applied for is situated on the edge of an area the Directorate of Fisheries in the report calls area 11 Froyabanken north.