UK produces 162.000 ton of farmed salmon in Scotland and 11.000 ton of rainbow trout (2012) but it lacks of many suitable areas to growth and currently is the 5 or 6th european country.

Norway produced instead 1,3 million tons of salmon in 2012 (and growing). Is the first european productor and by far the largest (Spain is the second with about 260.000 tons/year of mussels). Their aquaculture industry is an strategic sector for this 'small' (in terms of population) nation.

Is interesting how Norway won against the huge japan pride focusing in improving the visibility in supermarkets and targetting people that wanted cheap food. Realizing that to target first the higher social classes was a lost battle from the start.

Best i can find indicates that the 2013 exports slumped below the million ton mark...

It is exported, I can find it in Austria, however, it's no near as prevalent as Norwegian or Austrian (yes!) salmon.

Than being said, prices are now crazy low in Austria compared to what they were a few years ago.

I've only started to see Scottish salmon in the US in the last couple of years, and that only in smoked form. Very good stuff.

In the Netherlands Scottish salmon is sold as 'premium'. Funny how these things go sometimes.

There's a fair market (at least here in Scotland) for "premium" line-caught salmon, so I suppose it could be similar there?

Yes. The question is that fishes do not eat or use carbs normally, they use fat as source of energy and protein as last resource. Salmonidae are a little different because use protein as main source of energy. They burn muscle in its travel ending skinny and with deformed heads. Thus, normally maybe the 80-90% of flesh in wild salmon is tasty protein. If you think in a "fatty fish" you never think in salmon.

Aquaculture fishes instead do not have problems to obtain fat. Fat is cheaper than protein so you have better cost-benefit ratio if you feed your salmons with more fat content pellets.

I'm not saying that the farmed salmon is a bad product at all but wild salmon is a different thing. Not so apt to freeze and send to thousands of Km. You can earn more money selling it in fresh in the local market as wild product (but be aware that some 'wild' high-prized salmon in the market is farmed probably in fact).

Where is that line caught salmon from - presumably not from Scottish rivers or lochs?

At the sea.

I was curious about whether these were local Scottish salmon on imported salmon - traditionally there was a fair amount of salmon caught at sea near to the mouths of rivers in Scotland but that has mostly stopped - partially, as far as I know, from pressure from the landowners who own fishing rights to rivers & lochs. Fishing in Scotland can be extremely expensive.

NB I am in Scotland and eat a fair bit of salmon and I wasn't aware of the "line caught" label.

Edit: And by "extremely expensive" I mean up to £10,000 a fish.

> I was curious about whether these were local Scottish salmon on imported salmon

Not easy to know, but many could be imported from Denmark probably, scottish and faroese salmons are in the same population.

> Fishing in Scotland can be extremely expensive

The NASCO headquarters are in Edinburgh in fact. Is a measure to try to recover the species. To fish the genetically better specimens just a week before to spawn is a silly move (you are killing millions of fingerlings).

http://www.nasco.int/

Americans are also worried about the US fisheries and concerned about the need to preserve the resource. All atlantic salmon in the US market is farm-raised.

http://www.fishwatch.gov/seafood_profiles/species/salmon/spe...

scottish salmon is on a lot of menus in california. it is generally sold as a premium pan-roasted fish entree. it's quite good, almost as good as alaskan (king, sockeye) which is the primary wild market salmon here in ca.

i believe i've seen it in new york as well.