Diners Hooked on Salmon as Prices Dive : Fisheries: An abundance of Atlantic salmon fills dinner plates across Europe but devastates producers.

The Atlantic salmon, a delicacy that once graced only the tables of the wealthy, has become almost as cheap as the humble cod.

A huge increase in Norwegian farmed salmon last year sent prices into a tailspin, pleasing consumers but hurting British salmon farmers.

The price slump was so severe that the European Community and the United States this year launched anti-dumping probes against Norway, according to William Crowe, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Growers Assn.

“Prices took a real dive as the Norwegians sold excess volume at discounted prices on the European market,” said Crowe.

By June last year, average wholesale prices in Britain had plunged 30% to $1.90 from $2.75 a pound in January 1989. That was below average production costs of $2.30 a pound, Crowe said.

Norway, the world’s biggest producer, has since taken steps to bale out its 700 salmon farmers and shore up the market by introducing a minimum export price and an intervention system to buy and freeze the surplus.

British wholesale prices have bounced back to about $2.45 a pound. But industry analysts are unsure whether the prices will remain stable.

“Prices have picked up for the time being, but there is undoubtedly an overhang of frozen salmon,” a food analyst at London securities firm Kleinwort Benson.

Norway’s farmers, who rear salmon in fjords, unexpectedly doubled their output in 1989 to some 150,000 metric tons.

They had only made plans to market 120,000 tons, so they were forced to slash wholesale prices last summer to the equivalent of $1.65 a pound, on a par with the least-expensive varieties of fish such as cod.

Output in Britain, the second-biggest producer of farmed salmon after Norway, rose to about 28,500 tons in 1989, from 22,000 in 1988, and expects 35,000 tons this year.

The dramatic fall in prices has encouraged Europeans to eat more.

Last year Britons ate 25,000 tons, up from 16,000 in 1988. European Community consumption was some 110,000 tons in 1989, of which about 75,000 was supplied by Norway, said Crowe.

Farming may have brought salmon onto more dining tables, but wild salmon remains a luxury.

The fish was plentiful in Britain in the 19th Century before rivers became heavily polluted. In Aberdeen in 1860 farm workers rioted because they were fed salmon three times a week.

Now only about 1,000 tons of wild salmon are caught in Britain each year by fishermen who must obtain a license to cast nets across salmon river estuaries.

An industry spokesman, who requested anonymity, estimated that another 1,000 tons are caught illegally. “But no one can really put a figure on it.”