In 2025, 54.9 million farmed salmon died in Norway’s sea cages before they could be harvested. That is roughly one in every seven fish the country put to sea. And yet Norway’s salmon industry did not collapse, farmers did not go bankrupt en masse, and production carried on to more than 1.4 million tonnes. Somebody absorbed the loss — and that somebody was, in large part, the insurance market.
This is the story of the world’s most insured fish, and the lesson it holds for India. Norway’s salmon farmers insure their stock almost as a matter of routine. Indian fish and shrimp farmers mostly do not — even though the Government of India now pays 40% of the insurance premium for them. The gap between those two realities is worth understanding, because the risks are the same: disease, algal blooms, storms, escapes and predators do not respect borders.
The numbers: Norway’s salmon mortality, 2023–2025
The figures below come from the Norwegian Veterinary Institute’s official Fish Health Report 2025, presented on 11 March 2026. They are based on the monthly dead-and-live fish counts that every Norwegian farmer must report to the Directorate of Fisheries — not on estimates or industry surveys.
| Year | Sea-phase mortality rate | Salmon reported dead at sea |
| 2023 | 16.7% | 62.8 million |
| 2024 | 15.4% | 57.8 million |
| 2025 | 14.2% | 54.9 million |
| First half of 2026 | 5.8% (half-year figure) | ~22.7 million lost |
Read the trend honestly: mortality is falling — 14.2% in 2025 is the first time in several years it has dropped below 15% — but it is still enormous in absolute terms. Nearly 55 million fish died in a single year in the world’s best-run salmon industry. In the freshwater hatchery phase, a further 43.3 million smolt heavier than three grams died in 2025, down from 46.3 million the year before. The first half of 2026 continued the improvement, with the mortality risk down to 5.8% against 7.3% in the same period of 2025 — though the Institute stresses that half-year figures cannot be compared directly with full-year rates.
What actually kills the fish
Data from the industry’s AquaCloud platform, quoted in the Fish Health Report, breaks the 2025 losses down by cause: injuries accounted for about 33.5% of recorded mortality, infectious diseases 28%, and unknown causes roughly 27%. The single biggest killer is therefore not one disease but the accumulated damage of handling, treatments and the sea environment itself — followed closely by the diseases every salmon farmer fears: sea lice treatments, gill disease, cardiomyopathy syndrome and pancreas disease among them. Warmer waters are adding pressure: the 2025 report flags a record number of sea lice treatments as sea temperatures rise.
That mix matters for insurance, because it decides what a policy will and will not pay for. A disease outbreak is a classic insured peril. Slow, grinding losses from repeated handling injuries are harder to insure — and that is exactly why Norwegian farmers carry large deductibles, as we explain below.
What salmon farm insurance actually covers
Aquaculture insurance is not one product. It is a stack of covers, and stock mortality — the fish themselves — is the core. According to market research firm Dataintelo, whose aquaculture insurance report was last revised in October 2026, the global market breaks down like this:
| Cover | What it pays for | Share of premium (2025) |
| Stock mortality | Loss of fish from disease, algal bloom, oxygen depletion, storms, escape and predation | 72% |
| Property & equipment | Cages, nets, moorings, feed barges, service vessels, land-based tanks and recirculation plant | Grows ~6.8% a year |
| Liability | Third-party and environmental claims — including escape events | Grows ~6.5% a year |
| Business interruption / revenue | Lost income while a farm recovers, not just the dead fish | Fastest-growing traditional cover, ~8% a year |
Two forms dominate. All-risks mortality cover — which pays for any sudden mortality not specifically excluded — holds about 58% of premium and is what large salmon farmers in Norway, the UK and Chile buy. Named-perils cover — which lists the insured risks explicitly, such as disease, flood or cyclone — is the standard form in Asia’s subsidised schemes, including India’s PM-MKSSY. The newest and fastest-growing form is parametric cover, growing at 13.8% a year, which pays automatically when a measured trigger is hit — no loss assessment, no surveyor. In Taiwan, a Swiss Re-backed parametric policy for grouper ponds in Pingtung county pays out when rainfall exceeds 480 mm over two consecutive days.
How big is this market — and who writes it?
Dataintelo puts global aquaculture insurance at $420 million of gross written premium in 2025, forecast to reach $772.15 million by 2034 at 7.0% a year. That is a research estimate, not an official statistic — but the scale is the point. Against FAO’s figure of 103 million tonnes of farmed aquatic animals produced in 2024, worth USD 371 billion, $420 million of premium is tiny. The same report notes that premium equalled only 0.06% of aquaculture output value in 2018 — against 0.54% in Norway, the highest penetration in the world. In other words, almost all the world’s farmed fish is uninsured, and Norway is the exception that proves the rule.
Norway’s market is concentrated and specialist. Gjensidige Forsikring is the largest insurer of Norwegian aquaculture, and global brokers Aon and Lockton run dedicated aquaculture desks in the country. At Lloyd’s of London, Munich Re’s Syndicate 457 publishes a dedicated Aquaculture Stock Mortality product. The UK’s Sunderland Marine wrote its first aquaculture policy back in 1986. The business is hard to make pay: China Fishery Mutual Insurance Society reported a combined ratio of 117.18% for 2025 — meaning it paid out more in claims and costs than it took in premiums — which is why rates and deductibles stay high.
The largest single loss the class has ever seen came from Chile’s 2016 algal bloom: about USD 120 million of insured losses and USD 80 million of uninsured losses. Premiums in Chile were expected to rise 50–60% in its wake. That is the pattern of this market: a catastrophe reprices everything, and the uninsured carry the worst of it.
Why Norway insures — and what farmers actually pay
Three things make Norway different. First, the law pushes in that direction: market-research summaries of Norway’s Aquaculture Act note that farms must hold insurance or financial guarantees against escape and disease risks. Second, the buyers are big, professional companies that treat insurance as a cost of doing business. Third, the losses are so large and so visible — 54.9 million dead fish is a national statistic — that no board can pretend the risk away.
But “insured” does not mean “fully covered”. Gjensidige reported in 2019 that Norwegian farmers carried deductibles of at least 20%, and some as high as 40–50%, on stock cover. In plain terms, a farmer absorbs the first fifth to half of a loss before the insurer pays anything. That is why revenue and business-interruption cover is the fastest-growing traditional line: farmers who carry a 20–50% deductible on the fish still want protection against the income they lose while the farm recovers. Insurance shares the bill; it does not make the loss disappear.
The India contrast: 40% help, almost no takers — yet
India is where Norway was decades ago — except that the government is now paying farmers to insure. Under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Kisan Samridhi Sah-Yojana (PM-MKSSY), a ₹6,000-crore sub-scheme running from FY 2023–24 to FY 2026–27, the government gives a one-time incentive of 40% of the aquaculture insurance premium — up to ₹25,000 per hectare, or ₹1 lakh per farmer for up to 4 hectares — with an additional 10% for SC/ST and women beneficiaries. Four public insurers are empanelled, among them the Agriculture Insurance Company of India and The Oriental Insurance Company, and the scheme targets claim settlement within 30 days for shrimp. The insured risks are listed explicitly: infectious disease outbreaks, summer kill, environmental pollution, flood and cyclone, and seismic events.
And yet, as of 6 August 2026, only 2,294 hectares were covered under the scheme and only 127 beneficiaries had actually received the incentive — ₹40.03 lakh in total, according to the Lok Sabha answer of 11 August 2026. Against 39,20,746 registrations on the National Fisheries Digital Platform (NFDP) as of 2 November 2026, that is a rounding error. The money is on the table; the uptake is not. The reasons are familiar: farmers do not know the scheme exists, the paperwork feels heavy, and many have never seen an insurance payout in their village.
Elsewhere in Asia, the same gap is being closed from the other side — by governments paying most of the premium. In South Korea, the Suhyup programme has run aquaculture disaster insurance for 30 species since 2008, with central and provincial support of up to 90% of premium; in South Jeolla province alone, 1,731 farms were enrolled in 2025 and 62 natural-disaster claims paid out KRW 4.8 billion. In Bangladesh, Green Delta Insurance and Innovision presented a climate-resilient aquaculture microinsurance pilot in July 2025. In Kenya, GA Insurance launched its Samaki Bima fish-farm cover in Kisumu in August 2025.
How an Indian fish farmer can insure — step by step
- Register on the National Fisheries Digital Platform (NFDP) at nfdp.dof.gov.in. Registration is mandatory for availing any PM-MKSSY benefit, including the insurance incentive. It is free and open year-round, with no closing date.
- Buy a policy from an empanelled insurer — one of the four public insurers onboarded under the scheme — covering your crop for the cycle. The policy must cover the species and risks listed under PM-MKSSY, so confirm the insured risks in writing before paying.
- Claim the incentive through the NFDP. The 40% one-time incentive (up to ₹25,000/hectare, ₹1 lakh/farmer) is paid by direct benefit transfer after you buy the policy. SC/ST and women farmers get an additional 10%.
- Keep your records. Stocking details, mortality logs and water-quality records are what a claim rests on. Norway’s farmers report dead and live fish every month to the authorities; the habit that makes their insurance work is the same habit that makes a claim succeed in India.
- Ask about the deductible and the waiting period before you sign. In Norway, deductibles run 20–50%; ask your insurer what yours is, which perils are named, and how fast shrimp claims are settled — the scheme’s target is 30 days.
Two cautions. First, this is crop insurance for the fish or shrimp in the pond — it is not the same as the PMMSY accident insurance of ₹5 lakh for death or permanent total disability of the fisher, which is a separate, free cover. Second, no premium rates are published by the four empanelled insurers, so this post claims none; get a written quote for your species, area and cycle before budgeting.
Frequently asked questions
How many salmon died in Norway in 2025?
54.9 million farmed salmon died in the sea phase, a 14.2% annual mortality rate — down from 57.8 million (15.4%) in 2024 and 62.8 million (16.7%) in 2023, according to the Norwegian Veterinary Institute’s Fish Health Report 2025.
Who pays when farmed fish die?
The farmer first — Norwegian farmers typically carry deductibles of 20–50% — and the insurer pays above that, for insured perils. The government pays nothing directly; in India, by contrast, the government pays 40% of the premium itself.
How big is the aquaculture insurance market?
About $420 million of premium worldwide in 2025, forecast to reach $772.15 million by 2034, according to Dataintelo’s market report (a research estimate, revised October 2026). Asia Pacific holds 48% of that premium.
What does aquaculture insurance cover?
Stock mortality from disease, algal blooms, oxygen depletion, storms, escape and predation (72% of premium), plus cages and equipment, liability, and lost income. India’s PM-MKSSY lists infectious disease, summer kill, pollution, flood and cyclone, and seismic events.
Can an Indian fish farmer get the 40% premium incentive?
Yes — register on the NFDP, buy a policy from an empanelled insurer, and claim the one-time incentive (40% of premium, up to ₹25,000/hectare or ₹1 lakh/farmer; +10% for SC/ST and women). As of 6 August 2026, only 127 beneficiaries had received it, so early applicants face little competition for the money.
Is parametric insurance different?
Yes. Parametric cover pays automatically when a measured trigger is hit — wind speed, rainfall, wave height — with no damage survey. It is the fastest-growing form of aquaculture cover, at 13.8% a year, and it is already being tested for fishers in the Philippines and the Caribbean.
Related reading
- PMMSY Gives Fish Farmers 60% Subsidy in 2026 — the flagship scheme explained: 40–60% capital subsidy, ₹5 lakh accident insurance, and the PM-MKSSY aquaculture insurance incentive in full.
- NFDP Hits 39 Lakh Fishers: Get Your Digital ID Now — registration on the National Fisheries Digital Platform is mandatory for the insurance incentive; here is how it works and what it unlocks.
- Cyclone Cover That Pays Without a Damage Survey — the Cuddalore parametric cyclone pilot: 2,500 families, ₹25,000 per household, payouts triggered by wind speed, not by a surveyor.
- Paid When the Sea Says No: Philippines Tests It — the Mayani–Hillridge pilot pairing parametric insurance with guaranteed buyers for small-scale fishers.
Official links and sources
- Norwegian Veterinary Institute — Fish Health Report 2025 (official PDF) (sea-phase mortality 14.2% / 54.9 million fish in 2025; presented 11 March 2026; verified 9 November 2026)
- Dataintelo — Aquaculture Insurance Market Report 2025–2034 ($420M premium in 2025, $772.15M forecast for 2034; Norway 0.54% penetration vs 0.06% global; Gjensidige largest Norwegian aquaculture insurer; last revised 10 October 2026; verified 9 November 2026)
- National Fisheries Digital Platform — nfdp.dof.gov.in (mandatory registration for the PM-MKSSY insurance incentive)
- Fish Farming Expert — Norway farmed salmon mortality rate fell below 15% last year (5 February 2026; 14.2% in 2025, 54.9 million fish, harvest above 1.4 million tonnes; verified 9 November 2026)
Fact-check note: All dates and figures above were verified on 9 November 2026 against the Norwegian Veterinary Institute’s Fish Health Report 2025 (official), its February 2026 announcement, and Dataintelo’s aquaculture insurance market report (last revised 10 October 2026; data verified September 2026). The $420 million market size is a research estimate from Dataintelo, labelled as such in the text; it is not an official statistic. Norway’s Aquaculture Act insurance requirement is reported via market-research summaries and is attributed, not independently verified against the Act text. No Indian premium rates are claimed, because none are published by the four empanelled insurers. 11 March 2026 was a Wednesday, 5 February 2026 and 13 August 2026 were Thursdays. Images in this post are illustrations.