The hairy crab population in the waters of Shanghai is likely to grow significantly thanks to the crackdown on corruption. At this season in years past, government officials would be invited to banquets by contractors to feast on these precious gourmet creatures. This year, diners are down by half or more thanks to crackdowns on bribery according to operators of the specialized riverside restaurants where you eat hairy crabs.

More sea creature news follows along with other tidbits of news from Brazil, South Korea, Britain, Israel, Norway, Finland, and the USA.

*We sold out of our Bebidas das Americas Brazilian brewery stock today at $7.63. Our trade was input the Sunday before last but then delayed by a 5:1 split, merger of the AmBev common and preferred shares, and a new ticker symbol, ABEV. Desulpe. Nobody knew this would happen, says my broker.

*I put a sell on Posco because of the Korean politican shenanigans which led to the resignation of its CEO; Korea is supposed to have graduated from this kind of behavior. Not exercised yet. PKX is also owned by Warren Buffett but we lost a lot on it and I am "harvesting" losses for tax reasons.

*Here is where the money goes: a seafood stock, not involved with hairy crabs.

Back in the 19th century, the servants of English stately homes complained that they were being fed too much salmon, fished by their masters. This was not learned from TV serials but from recollections by the Devonshire servants and masters in my family living along the River Exe. The world faces the same problem today. Surfeit of salmon.

Marine Harvest ASA produces about a quarter of all the salmon in the world and is the largest company none of us ever heard of, formed by merger in 2006 and boosted by taking over the largest Polish smoked salmon producer and exporter, Morpol, last year. It is a global leader in aquaculture, fish farming, which has a high moat (barrier to entry). Marine operates intensive fish farms in Norway, Scotland, Canada, The Faroe Islands, Chile, and other countries and sells pretty much worldwide employing over 10,000 people.

In Q3 it had revenues of Norwegian Krone (NOK) 4.3 bn ($718.1 mn), up 18% from prior year Q3 on lower volumes of fish, only 80.92 thousand metric tonnes of fish. It expects to sell in Q4 99.6 kilo tonnes, for the Christmas season. Apart from salmon it also fish-farms trout and halibut. Its aquaculture business is only one line of business. Marine also processes the fish (smoking, making ready meals, fish fingers and whatnot), and has distribution networks for these in the US, Europe, and the Far East.

Its dividend yields 1.55% which is not smoked salmon; I would prefer to get my divvie in lox. It went ex-dividend today, and its price should fall today after a payout of NOK 0.075. It traded at NOK 6.88 at the Norwegian close. Citigroup has a NOK 8.3 target price for the share, +20% from its current level.

The stock trades two ways in the US, as MNHVY, the ADR, and MNHVF, the Norway ordinary stock in dollars. As we have reported before, buying the ADR in such situations may lead to the market-maker taking advantage of you: use a limit order. I set mine at $21.65 for the ADR. The pink-sheet traded ordinary shares fell to $1.14 and $1.10 bid (off 1.72% from Friday's close) but the ADR for now is unchanged. It does not report interim profit figures.

I put in an order for the MNHVF ordinary because it is better priced despite the 4% spread. It is filled already at $1.14. I'll have more if the stock goes down a penny. To get a full holding may take a few days.

The ADR is $22.37-$22.48 while the last price was $22.226. The edge for the ADR in theory is lower spreads and greater liquidity in US trading. The smart institutional money trades directly in Norway, rememberm although at least one fund manager in Arizona is reportedly stocking up on the share. He is of Norwegian heritage and tends to invest in the ordinaries traded stateside; so I am following suit.

At an investor meeting at the start of 2013, the Norwegian company let the world know that it plans a US NYSE listing in 2014. That will help but we want to be there earlier. It may be that Citi, an ADR depositary, is tipping the stock to get the NYSE mandate.

An important plus for the company is that this is a green business. The farmed salmon are fed fish meal and vegetable (rapeseed) which accounts for half the total costs of the fish; adding more veggies cuts the cost. The feed-to-fish conversion level is 1.2 to 1, compared to huge losses from other protein sources like meat. Unlike wild salmon, farmed salmon accept non-fish feed. MNHVY also uses windpower to fuel its waterside plants. That's the good side of this share.

Here are some negatives apart from my suspicions of the depositary. Via his Cyprus holding company, Norwegian shipping magnate John Fredriksen owns (my calculation) 50.13% of the shares, and other Norwegian entities like the pension plans own a lot of the rest. Mr Fredriksen is frequently involved in operations not in the interests of minority shareholders.

The company is under pressure from Paris and unions against closing down some plants along the French west coast, which I think it can handle.

Farmed salmon can suffer from sudden death syndrome or pancreas disease which spreads fast. Its cause has now been learned: it is a virus and can be controlled. Other problems with sea-farming include sea-lice forming on fish and the discharge of their excrement.

The global salmon market is surprisingly inconsistent. In Q3 Norway salmon commands NOK 9.96/kilogram at home while Scottish salmon gets 16.47/kg, Canadian 10.92/kg, and Chilean NOK 1.68/kg. That is not a reason to move to Chile. It is a result of a collapse of Chilean fish farming which MNHVY is attempting to overcome.

If you want to taste the product in the USA, its marques for smoked salmon (lox) are Kendall Brook and Duck Trap, which sound like little outfits operating a smoke house in Maine, but are really the sneaky arm of a company which will probably turn out 340,000 metric tonnes of the stuff this year alone.

*Delek Group and its operator partner Noble Energy have again delayed drilling at the huge Israeli offshore Leviathan field because of problems over landing the gas and funding a $584,000/day floating production, storage, and operations (FPSO) ship. The new target date is H2 2014.

The ultimate problem is politics: DGRLY wants to offload the gas to Cyprus or Turkey for export while Jerusalem wants to control the eatimated 1l5 bn barrels of oil equivalent Leviathan contains. By triggering antitrust actions against the licensees, which have spent c$800 mn so far on Leviathan, Israel is keeping control.

Meanwhile the specially commissioned Daiwa Atwood Advantage ultra-deep water drilling ship built to order for Leviathan in South Korea is being moved to other fields. It can handle Israel will run out of natural gas by 2015. (GlobesIsrael.com website reporting. I put up with politics in Israel more easily than in Korea.)

*Teva (75% sold) launched two cancer drugs to help broaden its franchise from neurology drugs. Long-lasting Lonquex (lipegfilgrastim) launched in Germany and short-acting acute treatment Granix (tbop-filgrastim) in the US both reduce the time patients getting myelo-suppression drugs suffer from neutropenia, low white blood cell production by bone marrow. The injectable drugs were acquired via TEVA's takeover of ratioPharm of Germany. Separately, Teva withdrew its application for biologics cancer treatment balugrastim from the US FDA which wants further study. (Globes Israel reporting used again).

*GlaxoSmithKline and its development partner Theravance, of Britain and the USA respectively, won European Commission's medical agency okay to begin marketing their inhaler treatment, Relvar Ellipta, in 31 European countries. This authorization for treatment of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmondary disease triggers a milestone payment to GSK by Theravance of $15 mn and when sales begin, another $15 mn. Relvar is also approved for sale in Japan. The US is lagging because of FDA concerns.

*Reckitt Benckiser is in the news here in NYC with the Times running a series of articles about its sublingual opioid replacement therapy which RBGLY wants to sell to a pharma house now that it is off-patent. The drug-replacement drug for addicts has a mixed record for safety and effectiveness, and while harder to abuse than other formats, is not without risk of street sales. Since the series began, the share is up marginally. RBGLY's main business is making condoms and household products which it is pushing in emerging markets.

*Nokia will launch its 2520 phablet with windows inside this week with AT&T but the subscription price has not been revealed. Lumia phone sales are expected to top 11.7 million units in Q4, vs 8.8 mn in Q3. NOK shareholders vote tomorrow on whether or not to take the Microsoft money and get out of the phone- and phablet-making business.