The world’s hunger for salmon is linked to an ecological disaster

OSLO – 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 a hype similar to the first Beaujolais of the season .

It’s also an acquired taste, as videos on social media are full of brave people trying foods that smell like “eggs rotting in open sewers.”

But it is becoming increasingly difficult for dozens of small-scale fishermen to produce this herring, because the Baltic Sea herring is on the brink of extinction.

The problem, they say, is that almost all the herring in the waters near the coast is scooped up by industrial trawlers so they can be ground up and fed to another famous Scandinavian fish: Norwegian farmed salmon.

Norway produces more than half of the world’s farmed salmon.

Last year, farms exported US$17 billion ($2.11 billion) worth of fish, and the government has pushed the sector to grow fivefold by 2050. The sector contributes about 3 percent to Norway’s gross domestic product, according to industry estimates.

Yet that success has endangered the herring. The fish plays a central role in the Baltic Sea ecosystem and with fish stocks having declined by 90 percent since the 1960s, scientists are increasingly sounding the alarm that the population could collapse.

That would endanger biodiversity in a sea shared by nine European countries. The crisis has sparked a debate about the best way to save the dwindling herring stock.

The European Commission proposed a complete end to herring fishing amid scientists’ concerns, but the ban was vetoed in late 2023 by the Baltic states, eager to safeguard jobs and other economic interests.

Currently, quotas are allocated on a country-by-country basis, although ships are not subject to the restrictions imposed by the countries they fly the flag, allowing them to catch large quantities of herring at one time.

Mr Bjorn Lundgren, whose three-person company Rovogerns Surstromming makes some of Sweden’s most prized fermented herring, has witnessed a precipitous decline in fish stocks.

He caught enough for 5,000 cans a year. Now he is lucky enough to fill 1,000 cans.

“For me the answer is simple,” he said. “Prohibit all herring fishing for fish not intended for the plate.”

Mr Lundgren is one of the small-scale fishermen caught up in this multi-billion dollar trade that also endangers the Baltic Sea ecosystem.

The marine area covers one-sixth of the Mediterranean Sea, and the brackish, shallow waters are home to a fragile ecosystem.

Herring and similar sprats both play a key role as an important food source for birds, mammals and other fish.

Several native species in the Baltic Sea have unique adaptations and any disturbances can ripple through the entire ecosystem.

Agricultural runoff, toxic algae blooms and warming waters due to climate change all cause stress.

The trawlers that harvest herring are another destabilizing force that threatens to completely disrupt the region’s ecology.

“There is no doubt that sprat and herring play a crucial role,” says Dr. Rainer Froese of the Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany.

He added that “there can be no doubt that the majority of herring and sprat catches in the Baltic Sea go to fishmeal and oil, and that Norwegian salmon aquaculture is one of the most important end users of these”.

The industrial trawlers that ply the Inland Sea have played a major role in decimating herring stocks.

About twenty trawlers, most of which have home ports in Sweden and Denmark, account for 95 percent of all herring catches in Swedish territorial waters.

However, it is difficult to find out exactly how much Baltic herring ends up as salmon feed. The herring path from the Baltic Sea to Norway passes through a third country.

Skagen, Denmark, is home to factories that process fish from all over the world. The flour and oil they produce are traded on a global commodity market with significant traceability problems.

One of the largest processors, FF Skagen, says it supplies “some of the largest producers of Atlantic salmon in the world.”

In an email, CEO Johannes Palsson emphasizes that the ships from which he sources fish adhere to quotas set by the government.

The company will not disclose how much of its product goes to the Norwegian salmon industry.

International trade data from the United Nations Comtrade database provide a rough indication of Danish exports in general.

Norway is by far the largest destination, importing around 300 million tonnes of products bearing the tariff codes associated with fishmeal and oil. That represents almost 25 percent of Denmark’s total export volume.

Research sponsored by the Swedish fishing industry and published in 2023 concluded that Norwegian salmon farms cannot be held responsible for the collapse of herring stocks due to the relatively small role the fish plays in salmon production.

“Even if the Norwegian salmon industry were to completely stop using Baltic herring in its feed, it would simply be shipped elsewhere,” says Dr. Sara Hornborg, researcher at the Swedish state research institute RISE and author of the article.

But it is important to contextualize the apparently small amount of fish caught from the Baltic Sea with the huge demand from the Norwegian aquaculture sector, a spokesperson for the NGO BalticWaters said in response to RISE’s findings.

“In their world, the feed from the Baltic Sea is only a small part, but from the Baltic Sea perspective the quantities are extreme,” BalticWaters said.

While it may be difficult to draw a scientifically conclusive link between the nosedive of Baltic Sea herring stocks and Norway’s fish farming industry, demand has exploded over the past thirty years.

“There are not nearly enough fish in the entire Baltic Sea to feed the Norwegian salmon monster,” said Nils Hoglund, fisheries policy officer at the NGO Coalition Clean Baltic, which filed legal proceedings in January over the EU’s herring quota.

The Norwegian salmon industry has reduced the share of fishmeal and oil to about 30 percent of feed, down from 90 percent in the 1990s.

However, further reductions have remained elusive because farmed salmon still require omega-3 fats and acids found primarily in marine life.

Mr Oyvind Haram, a spokesman for the Norwegian Fish Federation, said the industry mainly uses fish scraps as well as fish that are of too low quality for human consumption.

The company is also working to find alternative food sources to farmed fish, including insects, larvae and algae.

“However, we will continue to use marine ingredients for years to come,” Mr Haram said, “but it is a resource that we must manage responsibly.”

Relatively minuscule demand for Baltic herring for human consumption – partly due to government warnings about elevated toxin levels – has forced the industry to sell its catches as feed, said Dr Anton Paulrud, head of the Swedish Pelagic Federation, an industry body. .

Without Norwegian salmon, he said: “We wouldn’t be able to sell our herring. Now we can actually take this resource and turn it into food that people want to eat.”

That has left the ecosystem hanging by a thread and has had consequences for small-scale fisheries that target people’s plates.

Even major fermented herring producers are struggling. Oskars Surstromming, one of the country’s largest producers of the smelly delicacy, was considering filing for bankruptcy in 2022 after producing just 10 percent of its usual output.

“There are very few bright spots for the future,” says Mr. Janne Soderstrom, who has been at the helm of the company for more than forty years. As of 2022, the company has produced about 20,000 cans of herring, up from a peak of 250,000 in the mid-2000s, he added.

According to fishermen, academics and activists, significant shortcomings in policymaking have caused the decline of fish stocks in the Baltic Sea.

To help herring recover, they are calling for an end to large-scale trawling, although a complete halt may eventually be necessary to allow stocks to recover.

In an effort to ease the decline in herring stocks, the Finnish government on April 2 banned trawling for five weeks from May 25 – during the fish’s spawning season – and said the Swedish government is planning a similar measure.

“The picture is overwhelmingly clear when it comes to the situation for the Baltic Sea herring,” says Dr. Henrik Svedang, associate professor of marine biology at Stockholm University. “Fish stocks are among the most depleted in all of Europe.”

He said the current situation mirrors other fisheries collapses, including the recent cod crashes in the western Baltic Sea and Kattegat and the Atlantic-Scandinavian herring.

The quotas are lower, but the EU will still allow the catch of more than 95,000 tons of herring.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian salmon industry is booming. According to research firm IMARC Group, aquaculture is expected to grow by almost 40 percent by 2028, and the Norwegian government aims to export 5 million tons of farmed salmon and trout by 2050.

But one of the biggest challenges is that the massive industry sucking up vast swathes of the world’s oceans may already have reached the limits of what it can realistically collect.

When asked about the possible link between feed used for Norwegian aquaculture and Baltic herring, Mr Haram pointed to the RISE report which did not find that Baltic herring is used to a significant extent to feed Norwegian salmon. feed.

But for Coalition Clean Baltic’s Mr Hoglund, all that remains for the Baltic at this stage is a cautionary tale.

“We have lost the cod and are not going to get back to good condition anytime soon, and the same could happen to the herring,” he said. “We may just become a lesson to others.” BLOOMBERG