A salmon farm off the Lofoten Islands in Norway, on March 1.
Photographer: Oliver Morin/AFP/Getty Images
The World’s Hunger for Salmon Is Linked to an Ecological Disaster
The famous Scandinavian fish may be leading to the extinction of another and the livelihoods of the region’s small-scale fishers.
Fermented herring, a Swedish delicacy, holds such a special place in the country’s culture that national newspapers review each year’s vintage and the first sale of the year receives hype akin to the first Beaujolais of the season. It’s also an acquired taste; social media videos abound of brave folks trying a food that smells like “eggs rotting in open sewage.”
But it’s becoming harder for dozens of small-scale fishers to produce it because Baltic herring is on the verge of extinction. The problem, they say, is that almost all the herring in the waters near the coast are being scooped up by industrial trawlers so they can be ground up and fed to another famous Scandinavian fish: Norwegian farmed salmon.