DHAKA: After golf courses in the desert and a ski slope in a shopping mall, the United Arab Emirates is now turning its hand to farming cold water fish such as salmon.

That’s the goal of one Abu Dhabi company which plans to farm the fish in chilled onshore pools at prices that can compete with imports flown in from Norway or Ireland.

Asmak, which already runs offshore fish farms, is harnessing technology honed in Scandinavia to set up the Middle East’s first onshore fish farm in a bid to provide affordable alternatives to popular local fish such as grouper.

‘Within six to eight months you will be able to eat salmon that is locally produced here,’ Tamer Yousef, its marketing and business development manager, told media in an interview, reports gulfnews.com.

While Gulf companies are used to taking on the elements for projects such as golf courses and even an indoor ski slope in Dubai, Asmak’s plans pose a new challenge, keeping water at a temperature of 13 degrees Celsius in a region where sea water temperatures can go up to 40 degrees.

The project, with a price tag of 100 million dirhams or $27.2 million, involved building what is dubbed a land-based recirculation aquaculture system (RSA) farm on an area of 500,000 square metres, which essentially takes sea water, chills it and then re-uses it.

‘The advantage of having the farm onshore is that I will be able to control the environment so I won’t have to deal with issues like high tides or acid rain effects and most importantly the elevated temperature levels,’ Yousef said.

BDST: 1914 HRS, NOV 27, 2013