In the deserts of Dubai, salmon farming thrives

From a control room in the middle of Dubai's desert, Norway's sunrises and sunsets and the cool currents of the Atlantic are recreated for the benefit of thousands of salmon raised in tanks despite searing conditions outside.

The farming of salmon in the desert is "something that no one could have imagined", said Bader bin Mubarak, chief executive of Fish Farm. "This is exactly what we're doing in Dubai."

Inside the facility, waters flow and temperatures fluctuate to create the most desirable conditions for the salmon living in four vast tanks. "We provide for them a sunrise, sunset, tide, a strong current or a simple river current - and we have deep waters and shallow waters," Mubarak told AFP.

"Creating the (right) environment for the salmon was the hardest thing we faced," Mubarak told AFP. "But we came up with the idea of dark water that resembles deep water, a strong current like the ocean with the same salinity and temperature of the Atlantic."

Fish Farm bought some 40,000 fingerlings - or juvenile fish - from a hatchery in Scotland and thousands more eggs from Iceland to raise in open tanks in Dubai's southern district of Jebel Ali.

At their home in the United Arab Emirates, the tanks are filled with sea water that is cleaned and filtered.

Fish Farm produces 10,000 to 15,000 kilos of salmon every month. It was established in 2013 with the support of Dubai's Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum, to farm salmon and other fish including Japanese amberjack, which is used to prepare sushi.

Mubarak said that because of the technical challenge, salmon-raising remains the "greatest production" of the farm, which supplies to Dubai and the rest of the United Arab Emirates, where the population includes millions of expatriates.

"The UAE imports around 92 percent of its fish from abroad, and the goal today is to be able to fulfil (that demand) for imports internally, so that we have food security," Mubarak said.

Fish Farm, the UAE's only fish farm, hopes to meet at least 50 percent of the country's needs within two years, said Mubarak.