Food Critic Richard McComb enjoys a food tour of Stavanger, Birmingham's culinary sister in Norway.

We have been brought to a very deep, very cold fjord to take a look into the present – and future – of fish production.

It has taken an hour’s boat ride to get here, cutting around scarcely populated islands outside Stavanger in south-west Norway.

The landscape is majestic, with water cascading down sheer rockfaces. But it is what lies beneath that matters.

Swimming about in water so cold and so deep it looks black are thousands and thousands of the finest halibut in the world.

The idyllic setting, the fishes’ living conditions and the eating quality of the product are a shining example of Scandinavian gastronomique ingenuity.

We have moored at Sterling White Halibut, an immaculately clean, immaculately efficient floating fish farm at Hjelmeland, part of the Rogaland area. Within the large netted pens containing the fish, the fjord is 300 metres deep. Out in the middle, it’s 700 metres to the bottom.

Sterling White Halibut is a model of modern fish production and is being highlighted to delegates from the Délice Network, a global association of food cities, of which Birmingham, backed by Marketing Birmingham, is a senior member.

Délice, whose members include founder Lyon, Barcelona, Brussels, Gothenburg and Osaka, promotes gastronomy, excellence in food production, healthy eating and food education and culinary training.

The body was only formed in 2007 but it already operates as a unique and influential forum of sharing international best practice on cuisine.

New members sworn in at the annual general meeting in Stavanger include Birmingham’s US sister city Chicago and Rabat in Morocco, both of which had to prove their credentials as centres for gastro-tourism.

Food sustainability and welfare are high on the list of concerns for Délice and fish farming, often portrayed as the mass breeding of species such as salmon, in cramped, badly maintained conditions, has not always been favourably portrayed.

However, the system of production at Sterling White Halibut is of different order.

The fish start their life in indoor plants with plenty of fresh seawater before being moved to selected fjords and placed in open sea nets. It takes five years for the halibut to reach maturity for harvesting, by which time they weigh 6kg.

The UK, Sweden and Norway are the biggest markets for the fish. Halibut is loved by chefs because it holds it shape well – as fillet, loin, steaks, cutlet or for sashimi and sushi – and has good quality, pure, white meat.

The message about eco-friendly, sustainable fish farming is hammered home at the Rygjabo Marine Upper Secondary, which is a 15-minute journey by boat. The school takes its 80 pupils, aged 16-18, from 15 local islands and combines food education with career paths into fisheries and agriculture.

Seafood is a major focus – the school has its own commercial salmon smoking plant – and a high proportion of students become chefs after graduating from the state-funded institution.

Principal Magnus Mathisen insists fish farming is far more efficient, and sustainable, than pig rearing, for example.

He says it requires five to 6kg of feed to get a return of 1kg of pork, whereas only 1.3kg of feed is needed for 1kg of salmon.

“Fish farming is a very effective way to get food,” says Mathisen.

His deputy, Nils Petter Sand, makes the point that all farming, whether on land or sea, creates some form of “pollution,” adding: “But we need to food.”