#E10: Inside The Fight Against Salmon Farming In Iceland

The Reykjavík Grapevine has been published out of downtown Reykjavík for more than 20 years, with its offices for most of that time next door to the "World Famous Hot Dog Stand." Today we are joined by Benedikta Guðrún Svavarsdóttir from VÁ and Elías Pétur Viðfjörð Þórarinsson from the North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF) to discuss the ongoing fight against the growing open net pen industrial salmon farming in Iceland, its environmental impact, political manipulation and tactics. 

Our wide-ranging discussion focuses on the inhumane conditions of the fish cages in the fjords of Iceland, the struggle seen in Seyðisfjörður as a vibrant community attempts to prevent a large-scale fish farm from taking over their harbour, and the survival of the Icelandic salmon population. 

Our guests will be taking part in the screening of Laxaþjóð (Salmon Nation) on April 29, 2026, with Patagonia Films, at Bíó Paradís at 19:00. You can also speak with members of these organisations at the tower in Lækjatorg, and read more about their petition drive at StayCoolIceland.com.

Hosted by: Jón Trausti Sigurðarson & Bart Cameron

0:00: Introduction

0:03 The "Third Wave" of industrial salmon farming in Iceland: Norwegian corporate dominance and free licenses.

0:07 Salmon farming targeting struggling small villages for jobs and tax revenue.

0:12 The environmental effects of open net pens.

0:17 The extreme mortality rates in open net pens versus other livestock.

0:22 The fragile power dynamic and corporate manipulation of local politics and fees.

0:41 The great threat to Iceland's unique wild Atlantic salmon (population est. at 50,000 fish).

0:44 The value of the salmon fishing tourism industry.

0:53 On corporate attempts to manipulate national laws in favour of salmon farming industry.

1:09 Why Iceland does not need the salmon farming industry.

1:10 An upcoming screening of the documentary “A Salmon Nation” (April 29th), at Bíó Paradís + The Puffin Strike campaign at Lækjartorg.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Hello and welcome to the drop in, where we here at the regular grapevine talk to people who've we who drop in at the office either because they've been coerced to do so like now or because they simply have dropped by. Uh this time around we want to talk about salmon farming in Iceland. And we have with us here Benedict Kirun Sraustoter from VAW, which is uh well it doesn't have an I English title, but it's uh it's a community of people who are trying to uh preserve the fjord of Seydesfürd in the East. And then we have Alias Pietur Wildfür Thor and soon. I didn't fuck that one up today. That's great. Uh from NASF for the North Atlantic uh Salmon Fund. Uh thank you for dropping in. Thank you for having us. Our pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 1:05

Yes, we beg you to come in because uh we started saw some of the advertisements and discussion coming up locally in Reykjavik and realized you know, I'm the editor of the Reykjavik Grapevine and and we had not really covered the salmon discussion in Iceland in English. And uh some of our readers really are are at a loss when we talk about why this is environmental conservation is being aware of salmon farming.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Uh yeah, I mean you you've been running these campaigns and you now have uh a physical location uh in the old uh Surleturd, nor the there's like a this is a whole side story that we're not gonna get into. But there's a little sales booth in downtown Reykjavik uh off which has then which is also the reason why that is a is a word in Icelandic, but that's a whole other story. And you have set up shop there with uh um how should I put this? The the slogan is like the puffin is on strike or something to that. Yeah, it's uh the puffin' strike headquarters. So there's puffin strike headquarters. So the puffins have now unionized and they're on strike. Uh but I think we should uh start pretty broadly here and uh uh tr try to set the stage by talking about uh salmon farming in Iceland in general, like its beginnings, its current status, and why there is a pushback to um this industry expanding, or why there's even a pushback at the industry in general where um some of the people in your sort of sector or like who have been lobbying against this have just been pointing out we should just close this down altogether, I think, if I'm not mistaken. I think I saw that from perhaps Jon Kaltal or one of these people who have been talking about this over the past few years. So like I I I know absolutely nothing about salmon fishing or salmon farming. Um my background involves a bit of trout catching on a commercial basis for natural natural trout, but that's it. And I do remember that there were salmon farms here when I was growing up in the eighties, and that's about it. So should we just kind of start at the beginning? Who wants to who wants to begin? Um I can try.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

Um thank you. I mean, myself, I'm I'm born in 1996, so um I'm not a hundred percent sure of how things were back in the eighties. Back in the eighties. Grim. But it is it has been done in Iceland for a while, and what we're witnessing now is kind of the third wave of salmon farming. It has been tried out and tested, and you know, you it didn't really work out. Uh, but at that time, back in the day, it was usually just you know really, really small companies farming not a lot of salmon. Um, but what we're witnessing now is this third wave, it's more industrialized, it's bigger companies, and it's it's actually Norwegian companies that are the majority owners of the Icelandic ones. And it was it was a sneaky thing when the third wave started. These Norwegian companies, of course, have a lot of money and have been farming in not only in Norway but also in Scotland, Chile, um, and elsewhere over the world. And what they did is essentially they got the speaker of the house in the Icelandic Parliament, Einar Kaukufins, um, to work for them.

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Former Minister of the Fisheries back in the day?

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Yes. So he essentially um quit being uh the the Speaker of the House and went straight into lobbying for this industry.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

I th sorry that that I'm gonna interject here. I think uh this is going to be a theme, right? The revolving door between politics and yes, unfortunately that is um that is the case.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

But at that time we didn't really know how to do things here in Iceland, so we we based the production on a bearing capacity and licenses were kind of distributed to those that wanted it, and they didn't have to pay for the licenses, which is unusual because in in Norway that has always been the case that you have to pay for it. But as this was kind of a new industry in Iceland, there's always talks of this being such a young new industry, but it has been going on for quite a while, and and the companies and the players here have been doing it for a while, so it's not really like they're trying something completely new.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

It's interesting that uh in general the idea of allowing companies to use land, or in this case sea, without paying rent is unusual, to say the least.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

So they kind of like before this kind of planning happened, they got this bearing measurement and then they could just put in an application. It basically was just like, I want to put a fish farm there, and then because there was no planning, it just got through. And it was kind of before they made a law for you know that they would actually plan the zone, you know, distribute it, and then they would uh what's it called? Uh set you know, utselt uh uh they would you know off auction it basically. Oh so the the okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

So we're basically looking at a situation that when when is this happening with inner and and inner cocoa zone? Is this the late nineties, early noughties?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

No, this is is is uh not long ago. Oh, this is like ten years ago? Yeah, around I think 2013, 14 and start, and then like around 2017 is when we got pretty big.

SPEAKER_01 6:51

So to set the stage we're looking at a situation where we've had sporadic uh small scale salmon farming, and then in say twenty thirteen and in around that time, these foreign big fish uh salmon farming interests managed to uh acquire a political player in the country to help them lobby for it. And we're looking at a situation where there aren't really laws or zoning for these things, and it's promoted as a new industry where it's not, and it is set up so that because it's a new industry, quote unquote, uh there are no it's just like a how should I put it on the it's a it's an it's a wild west. It's an empty white slate, there's no regulation in place, and there is no uh even the idea of charging people for to set up shops.

SPEAKER_02 7:42

No, because this there's a very very interesting point there also, because the quota had left all these little villages. And so this was the new hope. So this was kind of like they take the quota away and they put it all together in fewer areas. All these small villages are so desperate for any work, anything, people moving there again that their house prices will raise. And this is what kind of sets the ground for this.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

So we're looking at a situation, and this also requires some background, I guess. Uh uh a lot of the small villages in Iceland were set up in and around the fisheries in the twentieth century. They hardly we hardly had villages prior to the twentieth century until we had sort of like proper commercial fishing. Uh these happened without any quotas, and by the seventies we had an overfishing issue. And in the eighties we we took up a quota system. And then by the late eighties, early nineties, those quotas became a sellable asset, which meant that there was a consolidation in the ownership, which meant that a lot of small villages ended up with almost zero fishing quotas and therefore their whole livelihood was basically gone. But you end up with these kind of shell almost villages with no um way to sustain themselves, looking for uh ways to sustain themselves. And in comes fish farming as an option where you have these fjords and they see well, these untapped resources, if you will. And this is the environment that these baker f uh salmon farming interests are are are uh speaking into, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 9:22

The resources too. Uh speaking to that though, as you know, they have harvest as a foreigner.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:28

The resources are the most beautiful fjords in the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

So you're saying Yeah, that's why I said like quote unquote, I think.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

And this is like this is just just such huge amounts. Just in the fjords where we are fighting, it's they're asking for 10,000 tons, you know, of course. Of yearly production. And the jobs that will be created are like I know there are going to be jobs around this, obviously, but there's gonna be maybe eight to twelve jobs. Right. You know, and if you think about it, you know, if you're a politician and you're like, oh, you know, weighing this, I find it so strange to want to sacrifice, you know, because you know the pollution that's that comes with this, you know. And it this is not this is a lot. And and the this is not gonna be a game changer for the town or the, you know, so I think in a way, I know it has changed a lot in the Westchurch, and it's hard because it's had has kind of like really been able to kind of like grow there and create this livelihood again. And then it's very hard to kind of go into the new times, and that's what I'm so afraid of that we want a different future. And now we've got this old style, old way of thinking, kind of settled there already. And people are that are living in the communities, they are of course just happy that there are people moving there, and there are more people in the kindergarten because that's kind of like what you are thinking about in a small town. So it's very hard to stop this when this has started. So it's very sad that the story has how it kind of how they managed to roll this in. And I think our field, uh, we are the first community that uh opposes this. So it has mainly been the the salmon fishers and the you know that have been fighting this. And I think and it's kind of fun maybe to think about it. Why is Sedish Verder uh opposing this? I think it's because we have a different attitude in the town. We see a different future. But it has also been very interesting how very hard it has been to stop this, even though the community has said no. And the country is saying no. You know, the the people of you know, but still the politicians and the whole system keeps on always working for this industry. And uh uh you know I still hope we are not we have we don't have a decision yet for say the church. Uh it's been five years now. And uh but still uh it's very interesting to go through this fight and see the corruption and see how how far they try to bent the loss for this industry when nobody's asking for it. No. You know.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

So uh I would like to.

SPEAKER_03 12:09

Yeah, I want to say just you mentioned the pollution. Can you can you get into specifics on the pollution for a small fjord like when you have this many?

SPEAKER_02 12:16

No, it has uh I I think it was uh you know just because you need to find something that people can easily you know think of. It would be like 160,000 what was it? 160,000 people, and all the sewage would just go straight into the ocean.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

That's that's the waste coming from the waste coming.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

From the plant salmon in that fjord? Or just in that fjord?

SPEAKER_02 12:40

It has like that would be 10,000 tons. I think then they are applying now for 6,500 fertile because they're not yet, you know, they they can now have 6,500 firstile salmon and 3,500 unfertile, but they're not using that license yet.

SPEAKER_00 12:58

I think it's worth noting that salmon farming, there's different methods to do that. Um way back here in Iceland, the uh the Icelandic government actually had a salmon farming company in Kotlavillage. And at that point it was it was um they would have juvenile salmon raised there until they were ready to go to the ocean. Uh then they would release them out and then they would return in a year or two. Um so you would keep kind of a bit of the wild in it, but then they would just harvest it in Kotlevillage. Then you have land-based salmon farming, you have closed containment salmon farms in the ocean, and then you have the open net pens or the sea cages, which is the predominant method that is used here in Iceland and elsewhere. And the problem with that is, like Benedict mentioned, with with the pollution, is it's it's pa basically just a net. It's one single mesh net, so everything goes directly through it. Whether that would be, you know, yes, it's it's the leftover foods, and it's excuse my language, but it's the fish shit. Yeah. Uh but it's also, you know, they have poisons for the sea lice, this and that. So everything just goes, you know, through it and and directly out to the fjord and where it gets scattered across the and it can actually affect the Arctic Tiar.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Yeah. And, you know, other fish, the the salmon lice when that gets out.

SPEAKER_03 14:24

So what happens and just to visualize it, we see these nets. It's just a circle basically that you see on the outside, but it kind of looks like it's bubbling. It almost looks like it's like you've got a yeah, like you've you've set something up to make pasta or something. It's so much bubbles. And that's animals in there, huge amount of salmon, and they close quarters. They have a tendency, and you mentioned Scotland, and this is where I'm more familiar with it, the the mass of sea lice. They start uh end up can contracting sea lice and it it's all over these animals. Yeah. So then they pour in pesticides at a large scale industrial scale to try to control the sea lice. But both so then you have both the sea lice uh everywhere in that fjord plus the pesticides in the fjord.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Yeah, and essentially it's sea lice, they are a natural phenomenon. And for wild Atlantic salmon, when they return from the ocean back to the rivers, they will usually have maybe two, three, four sea lice on them, which is kind of a it's a sign that it's fresh from the ocean. And when when the salmon hit the freshwater, the sea lice will die in a matter of a couple of days. Um but when you put you know 100,000, 200,000 farmed salmon in really close uh proximity there in the in the pens, yeah, it's just a feeding ground for these sea lice. The salmon can't get away, so just they multiply and it gets super problematic. And like you mentioned, they use uh pesticides to get rid of them. There are also a couple of other mess measures. Um they use feeding fish. It's like rock kelsey, um, which eat the sea lice. Yeah. Oh, okay. And the problem with that is catfish? Yeah, some s I'm not I think it's cat, isn't it cat?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

I think so.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Yeah, it's a fish that uh eats them off. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

It eats them off. Yeah. But the problem they they they can't survive in the pens, these fish, so they die. So it's that's a lot more mortality is just for that feeding fish. And then the third method is that they pump the salmon from the pens into a boat where they get washed in warm water. Or essentially warmer water. Yeah. Because the sea lice can't handle that. And for us, the water might be, you know, lukewarm. But for salmon, which have cold, they're a cold-blooded creature. So they're just torturing. Yeah, they're essentially boiling them. And a lot of the fish will die from that. Um the ones that have wounds from sea lice, they usually get infected, especially because the sea lice tend to be the you know the most problematic in the autumn. And then we get colder winter months. The wounds don't heal, they get these winter wounds and and die from that as well. And this has become a huge problem in Iceland. Um, and unfortunately, the the Food and Veterinary Authority must, I think it was like six, seven years ago, where they said, you know, sea lice will never be a problem in Iceland. The waters are too cold. And that is still something that they say in the East, which they haven't had the big sea lice problems yet. So they said, yeah, it's it's not going to be a problem. And then, you know, fast forward five years in 2023, we had probably the worst sea lice infestation in salmon farming anywhere in the world.

unknown 17:40

Great.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

And you maybe saw the photos too.

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Did you see those photos that they cut?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

I saw them. I don't think you did, maybe, but I did see them.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Uh very uh yeah, it doesn't it's not something you want to associate with something you're gonna eat.

SPEAKER_02 17:56

Um and then maybe like just because it's farming, it's you call it I'm a farmer, I'm a fish farmer, but then 20% in the pants dies. And that is just something that is an okay number. Yeah, and it's it's like if you if we just put it on land, if you just think about animals and you're growing animals, would we ever be happy with 20% of them just dying? Like, you know, it's kind of a you know, like like we just make in we decide somehow that that is okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Yeah. And I think that is that is a problem. I mean, it's it's 20% mortality per year. Yeah. Through the the whole life cycle, it's actually 40% of the farmed salmon that are put in these pens die. In closed containment, uh fish farming in the ocean, which is essentially the same, but it's it's you know made of metal and no sea lice can enter, you can collect the waste. Okay. There's no escapes. Um the companies that are doing that in Norway have a mortality rate of about two percent. Okay. Land-based farms, pretty similar, like two, three percent mortality rate. Uh, I reached out to the Food and Veterinary Authority and asked, you know, in all protein production here in Isen, whether that is cattle, pigs, chicken, what is the mortality rate? And for everything it was under five percent. And then we have salmon farming, which, like Benedict mentioned, is 20% a year, which we somehow accept. Maybe because it's happening underneath the surface, and we don't look at salmon as being a cute and cuddly species we want to save.

SPEAKER_03 19:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

Uh, but it is a huge problem. And it's only growing with, you know, rising temperatures and and all of that.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

The rising temperatures would affect the the proliferation of sea lice and that's so I I want to bring this back to what we were talking about before, because I I'm I'm interested in explaining the revolving tour and why sea farm uh salmon farms are getting opened up where nobody seems to be very interested in having them. Yeah. Um and maybe explore that a bit more before we may go back to your theme, which is like there are now ways of doing salmon farming that are less harmful to the environment and less harmful to the salmon itself, and we're opting for the uh the version that is harmful and for both the salmon and the environment. Which sounds kind of like uh and who is opting for it?

SPEAKER_03 20:21

Because with this discussion goes on in other parts of the world and i i they it's closed, right? Yeah, they were not allowed to do these kind of but one of the things elsewhere.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

You know, you we we had this we talked about the struggling small villages that admittedly, and I hate to say this, were um originally built about uh on on unsustainable exploitation of of mamm um of marine life. Yeah. And we're looking at a situation where they're kind of continuing that by opening up salmon farms and then actually um create doing harm to the in-fjord uh marine life instead of the general North Atlantic. Uh and this kind of the logic there is that um these villages who are their own municipalities often are looking for more job opportunities, even though there are not a lot of jobs that come out of these things based on you know the consequences of them. But there is also tax revenue which I guess is a part of the logic here. That these smaller municipalities trying to like sustain themselves are looking at the potential tax revenue from these, not necessarily just the jobs, and that makes them very susceptible for um th these companies to show up, right? And there on top of that, and I hope I'm not I hope this is not liable, but it won't be because I'm not saying it gonna say any specific names. You will also see that there is also a revolving tour between the municipality politicians and some of these companies. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

There are like uh the people that are now in charge of the the big sound farming companies in West Frids and also we're in the East Furz, we're also uh politicians, local politicians in the municipality, in the highest position there. Yes. And then moved to the this job of uh running these companies. Conveniently. Conveniently. But also I think what is another point maybe there is that uh the the kind of power dynamic, you can really see how that is very, very kind of fragile because when you have these big companies come in, it's so quick to just change the power dynamic. Who is gonna be actually running the town when you have such a big company that can easily just go to the mayor and say or to the municipality and say, so you're not gonna do what I'm telling you to do? Because you know, I'm kind of like running half of this town for you, so I can just take it ever somewhere else.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

So we might pull out then and you and then with it.

SPEAKER_02 22:58

Yeah, and that's what we've been thinking so much about. Like, why don't we grow our little towns in the uh in our countryside more up, like on different acts and different you know, and let something grow and that there are smaller companies and many companies, because this is uh, you know, I think we all know how this ends. And we already see so many examples. Uh Vesterpe, for example, one municipality in the West First, uh they allowed themselves, I think it was in 2022 or three, they allowed themselves to like one end of the year, they hired the the percentage from zero point, what was it, zero point up it was at least zero point one that they heightened it, you know, the tax, the harbor fees. And the some farming company sued them that they were not, you know, that this was not uh, you know okay. And they took that to court and they won the case, and actually the end result of that was that it was actually no law uh binding the the company to pay harper fees. So they were just like they had to just stop paying harper fees and they had to make a new uh fee that was called Altis Geld, like a different. And from what what we know now, they have not paid this Ltis Geld in the municipal but to the municipalities because since then, since this verdict, because it's so unclear what's so they're using infrastructure for free. At the moment, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

And it goes, I mean that's that's even broader than just where they are operating. I mean in the West First they have to drive the roads all the way uh to Reykjavik and and the airport and they are ruining a lot of the roads there as well, uh, which they're not paying for.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

Um well, that's the discussion is interesting because the roads here were not built for heavy transportation. Um it shows. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 24:58

True also of the electricity out there. As obviously we had the thirty thousand dead fish in West Fjords that we were covering recently when the uh the electricity shut off for nothing.

SPEAKER_00 25:11

But but it's it's it's such an interesting case how this industry got here. And I mean I'm I'm myself pretty familiar with the West Fjords. My mom is from Pil to Talers and her her whole family as well. And that is one of the towns that when she was young, it was it was thriving and you know, a lot of people there, and then just gradually people started moving away, and and before salmon farming came in, there was just pretty much nothing there. Um and then in comes this hero, which is salmon farming, and it's being pushed by politicians or former politicians and really, really powerful people, and they're promising everything. You know, we're we're gonna build up a community, we'll have more children, we'll have, you know. Things will go back to normal. Exactly. Um and unfortunately that just that isn't the case. And I think how we describe it is they're putting all the acts in one basket and then just stepping on the basket.

SPEAKER_02 26:09

And there was such a funny story. I think it was from Pilte Taler, it was in January, and there was this uh uh radio show, like this afternoon radio show, and this uh Gunnatis was like uh the you know, she was like, We're gonna talk now to Raki from or someone from Pilter Taler rather than talking a few other. And he's he's uh telling us that they need women. They need women to come to be with all these men that are working in the fish farms. So we're gonna now talk with him and get started on that. And then seriously, they had a phone call about like how women should not just rush to Bilte Taler to go and live there to what you know uh so many well paid. Just to be a housewife there, or like and and this again come takes us down to this kind of like old times attitude, like where am I am I in the 1950s? Like, what is this?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

But this was hilarious, and you should find this interview because it's it's a bit manipulative as well, because they promise everything and then they they they take their claws and put them in these communities, and then things happen like Benetith w was mentioning the harbor fees, all of this, and then of course there's more um automation as well in this industry, like with everything else. And Jens Karlar, who's a politician now, used to be the CEO of uh the biggest salmon farming company in the East. He even said, you know, what was it, five years ago or something? He said, you know, it's it's such an interesting industry to be in, because we can control everything independents here in Iceland from Norway. And then as soon as he said that, he realized that's maybe not a smart move to say when we're trying to get permits, because this means that the ten jobs we're promising now will be two jobs in another year. And of course these are jobs, and of course they are in communities that unfortunately just don't have a lot of job opportunities, and and we have to respect that.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

Um but it goes back to the things you have been talking about, which is like um instead of taking these mono uh let's put them mono industry towns that were built around fisheries and fix quote unquote their problems by um getting another big polluting um business into town to like solve the problem of a big polluting business.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Old story and new, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah, you you're you're like uh what can happen if you don't do that is that you can have like a more diversified version of a future for these places. And um and obviously the problem sometimes with that is that these have to kind of happen organically and locally and it's not a centralized thing. It doesn't come from somewhere and fix the situation, which has been that sort of weird dynamic between those small towns since the nineties and and the government in Reykjavik, which is like you have like the I've I can't count how many interviews with small town mayors I've seen in my life where they're on the television kind of pointing towards Reykjavik and saying you guys have to come and fix this here. Whereas like often the solution is actually more local and more diverse than just bringing something to fix it. And the idea of using one shop stops to fix a um a problem with with regards to like the jobs in the area have been experiments like setting up a aluminum smelter in the East, which was supposed to be a one-stop shop solution with uh a lot of disruptions. But then we see at the same time that the advent of tourism, the advent of uh people being able to work uh anywhere in in diverse industries and then small uh technical startups, even in places like East Afiller, which has like a massive success story out of there, uh have tended to create more much more sustainable solutions to those um problems of people having something to do out there. Uh so it's kind of uh well it's uh it's it's it's an antiquated solution um to a problem that should probably not be solved that way, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

I think also it's a little bit what I have found at least is that it's not uh something to fix. I think often uh like uh like if for the aluminum smelter, for example, it's like I think it was Helke Sellian uh who said he lived in Rena First. I I hope I'm not saying anything wrong. At least it's just doesn't matter who it would be, but it was like we had a good life. I lived in a great town, beautiful mountains, beautiful sea. We had everything we needed. And then it's also this they they plant these seeds. Something is wrong. You need more. You need to have more. This is not enough. If you're gonna be sustainable, you need to have this and that. And and and suddenly everybody's talking about like how everything is just you know, really hopeless and awful and you need something more, but it was never really needed.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

No, I see what you mean. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

You know, and of course we can always, we should try to aim for, you know, uh figuring out a way to be more sustainable, and we want that for our little towns. I don't mean it that way. But it I think this idea, it's not a good start. You know, and and there is this is not the the this is a very typical way. And and I see now in Say Disfer that we have lost so many jobs since since they came with the idea of these fish farms, and we this kind of whole thing started. Uh we lost 35 jobs in the fisheries, they they they closed down the fisheries. So the company that uh decided to close everything down in State Israel, and finally all the quota has left. We have no smelter, we have no fish uh factory, and we have no boat there anymore. So this is a huge shock for a small society. They decided to west to invest in the west fjords, in the fish farms, in the west fjords. So they put like 17 uh billion into the westfjords, fish farms, and they closed everything down in State Swords while their another fish farming company is trying to get their license there. And this is like, you know, yes, you're trying to totally crush us. So we will be like, okay, we'll take anything. Yeah, you know. And and I'm I'm so happy when I'm in State Sword, I always feel this that this this is not gonna get us. You know, and I know probably it's more people have kind of like, oh, maybe we have to take this kind of this this uh conversation is maybe started a bit off, but it has started that. But I always feel this that this is not the way forward. We're not gonna let this attitude take us down to this uh level, you know.

SPEAKER_03 33:10

I think we've given some context. I wanna I want to jump into as an English language resident of Iceland or as a tourist or as somebody who is uh Iceland's wiener, like a friend of Iceland. What are we doing now? What what can we do to start making a di start making a difference?

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Like, well the the um the Salmon Nation that's gonna be uh we're gonna have an event on the twenty-ninth of April in Pio Paratis. Okay. Where uh Patagonia is uh creating this event with all the nature conservation uh NGOs in Iceland. Yeah. And uh we're gonna try to have a conversation with the uh yeah, we're gonna try to have a conversation with uh the parliamentarians that are in the committee.

SPEAKER_03 33:58

Sorry, I'm looking up for a second. Yeah. Oh my god. What happened?

SPEAKER_01 34:04

My bad. I ran out of space, shouldn't have happened, but it happened. Sorry. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 34:08

When did it happen? It just it just flipped it like that, so I think I just caught it. You caught it, yeah. Uh strangely busy, because what did we what did we just do the other day? It was um drop in with the the days are blurring together. The days are blurring together.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah, yeah. We were doing uh people who live on a boat.

SPEAKER_03 34:36

Fascinating interesting. Yeah, 58-foot boat, they're right over here. Oh, okay. Uh they're insane. Not insane, but well yeah, a little bit. Four kids raised a had stopped in Eastavir there and gave birth to a child there. And then there's four kids on this on this sailboat. And then they he races boats in France and then does charters out here and brings skiers to the Isaphir there in February on a sailboat. So I took a look. I like sailing. I I I I studied sailing. There's no protection for the helmsman on this boat. None. Oh. And they're sailing in the winter. I was like, and then they have a stool so the kids could steer the boat. There's no protection from the elements in February in the Arctic. That's fascinating. What's that about? Let me do the math, and then when he climbed up to to check out the mast, and I was like, yeah, the things you have to do on this boat is you're not like not really OSHA approved, right? You're not like clipping in. They had no there wasn't a life lifeline anywhere. I was like, oh, interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Beautiful boat. But okay, sorry. Are you recording again? Yeah, yeah. I think we only lost like a minute, maybe, so it's fine.

SPEAKER_03 35:50

So we were saying I was saying uh yeah, what what solutions do we do? And we said April 29th at BioPartis, which is strangely enough the most recommended movie theater probably in the world, right? But anyway, you have an event with Patagonia, you say?

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Yeah, yeah. Patagonia made the film in 2023.

SPEAKER_03 36:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:09

About uh it's called Salmon Nation. It's just about the kind of status of the rivers and this battle and you know, our kind of like, you know, where we want to head. Uh just basically a conversation with most of the people that uh have been fighting this battle and also scientists and uh and just shows the beautiful rivers and and landscape. And uh they want to have a conversation with uh and hopefully uh because I think we need to go forward and we need to have the conversation, not be stuck kind of in this polarized. We need to kind of figure out a way to uh build some bridge so the parliamentarians will listen to us.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

Yes. So we need uh Western Islanders to speak up to their families, maybe, or is that what what can we do? Like so I can not buy farmed salmon. I mean, I know my wife would not allow me to buy farmed salmon. That's a very good stuff.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

And always in a restaurant, you should ask if where the salmon comes from. And uh yeah, definitely. That but we are as consumers, that's the best we can do. Then we can also uh you know uh share social media things you see, join the NGOs, any any solidarity basically.

SPEAKER_03 37:28

So for example, VAO, which is spelled V, A with an accent over the top, VAW or NASF would be some would be two of the two of the organizations. One thing I would notice as a as we do uh advise tourists a great deal, and one of the things we're not say the sphere there, which is um for tourism is uh like one of the high points of a trip around Iceland, uh especially in the summer when you can get there easily, because it's an artist colony, um a successful artist colony. And kind of if you're planning a trip to Iceland, that's probably what you were intending, right? You maybe want the urban experience of Reykjavik, but this beautiful fjord with these magnificent houses built by the re uh refurbished by these artists, is um kind of the best we can offer. I would say anybody can offer. Right? Is that is that accurate? Yeah, we live there on purpose. A lot of my friends who are Reykjavik based artists take a turn, take a couple of years out in Saidisfer there, just to touch base. And I know that we just featured um a great director who is kind of in the region who did um The Love That Remains. Yeah. He's out he's out.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

We ha also have like a little beautiful cinema, kind of like Biopartis, little cinema called Her de Bio.

SPEAKER_03 38:42

Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_02 38:43

In uh Seyes Ferdus.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

So that kind of tourism I feel like uh while I'm not a huge fan of people getting in cars.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

Um you can get well, this is actually where you land on the only ferry that takes you to Iceland.

SPEAKER_03 38:54

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

That's the gate. Uh Norrana.

SPEAKER_03 38:58

Uh but that kind of tourism where you're touching making cultural touch points, uh does does shape our economy and does help us r uh fight back against some of the other difficulties that um we were talking about environmental disaster, but also it's a cultural disaster and also it's um oppressive tactics that people are using. So for for those of us who share the the value of like one person, one vote, I feel like, as as opposed to corporations controlling the votes, I feel like being a responsible tourist helps.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Yep. Definitely does. Um and I think you know, salmon farming in sea cages as we're doing now, it kind of goes against everything that we, at least as Icelanders, want to stand for. Yeah. Because it's it's clean nature, it's renewable energy and sustainability, those are kind of a lot of things that people like that pop into the minds of people coming here.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yeah. Yeah, this is where I wanted to pick up again on the the the difference between uh the methods of farming, which you touched upon earlier. So we've kind of talked about uh how one aspect of this socially is that setting up uh a Salomon farm in a fjord uh is basically not a long-term solution to the um to the job situation of that area. We've talked about how the logic of of one-stop shop solutions and or the revenues and the few jobs that come with these are kind of enforcing these things on it. But uh the downside is that there is no plurality in the um or uh diversification in the uh of options for those villages. If this this one single um company leaves, they have like a stranglehold on the village, that's a problem. But then there are also the more like we've talked about the uh the environmental impact of just pollution and around these things. Yeah. We haven't really talked about the salmon that naturally lives here and the impact of that. We should maybe address that briefly because you're m you must know these things.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Yeah, so um the wild salmon, uh the wild Atlantic salmon that we have here is kind of our only client at NASF. That's what we're working for, and and Iceland is is such a unique place for these fish. We have a relatively healthy population still. Um the decline has been you know pretty large for the past 30, 40 years, around 70%, just under that. So they're having problems. Um, and those problems are connected with rising temperatures and and all those different things. But now we've we've just added on top of that salmon farming, which to the the the best known scientists on salmon studies, they say that that is the biggest problem that wild salmon are facing. And the problems they are, it's a playthrough of problems. It is like we touched upon earlier, it's the sea lice. So a lot of salmon they'll travel when they're heading out to the ocean. They they they travel past the West Fjords before they head out to Greenland and the Feroy Islands to feed over over the winter. And they'll pass, you know, clouds of sea lice. And it only takes about two to four sea lice on a juvenile salmon to kill it. So it's it's that problem. It's the problem with sea trout and an Arctic char that are in these fjords, and they they mainly spend their time in the in the fjords rather than going further out where you might not have as much sea lice. Uh, but then the main problem is the genetic integration, because we have wild salmon here in Iceland that have been evolving for thousands of years, and it it's really interesting to see, for example, that in the north there is a river called Viditalsau, which is relatively slow flowing, but it has a tributary that is just waterfalls and fast-flowing white water. And the salmon to those two rivers, even though they are connected, they're completely different. The fish that lives in the Fitziao it's more lean and agile, having to jump off waterfalls, while the fish in the Vida del So is is much shorter and broader. Oh wow. So that is the how they have been evolving. And then we have the farm salmon that we're raising here. And Iceland is actually the only country that allows a foreign population to be farmed. So the the fish that we're farming here in Iceland, it's not an Icelandic farm salmon. It's not a strain that we've spent 20, 30 years making, it's a Norwegian strain. It's the same fish that they are using in Norway, which is based off the genetics of Norwegian salmon, which are completely different to ours. So when they escape, which always happens, um, that's just a problem with sea cages that you can't really take away. They run up the river. And they spawn with the wildfish. And then just dumbing down the genes and and you know, in a long t long time it's gonna it's gonna cause pretty detrimental effects to these populations that have been evolving for such a long time. Yeah. Just making them less likely to be um able to survive the conditions we have here.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

And the population is 80,000 fishes?

SPEAKER_00 44:25

It's actually gotten less than that, yeah. I think last year it was was pretty terrible. Uh, but now I think the wild population is around 50,000 fish or so.

SPEAKER_01 44:35

We have 50,000 salmon left.

SPEAKER_00 44:37

Yeah. So we have 50,000 salmon left in Iceland, and then in one pen in Iceland it can be up to 200,000 farmed salmon. So you have you know four times the amount of the wild population in one pen.

SPEAKER_01 44:53

Um yeah, yeah. There's some weird joke there. But uh okay, uh can I? Sure. Um so that's that's another aspect. But the other thing we were then talk talking about earlier, which is that we are bringing in these fjords pan uh fish farming things, but you were telling me about land-based fish farming with less mortality and less pollution. Yeah. Why are why are we not doing that? Why are we doing the other thing? Why are we doing the b the bad version of this?

SPEAKER_00 45:27

I think it's it's worth mentioning that Iceland is taking right steps uh in regards to um land-based salmon farming. We now have land-based salmon farms uh on the Reykines Peninsula, for example, uh, and they are a more sustainable version of farmed salmon. But the problem that we've spoken on with the West Fjords and the East Fjords and these small rural communities that depend on these jobs is you can't have land-based farms there. We don't have the the space, we don't have the energy. Or the water. Or the water. So there's you can't really just put it there. Um but there are other options as well. There are these closed containment um sea cages, which are used in in Norway, for example. And we could be pushing towards that, where you have, you know, around 2% mortality rates, you have no escapes, you have no sea lice, you can collect the waste and use it for agriculture. Uh but despite that, we're just not doing that. And the simple reason behind that is it's just way more profitable for these companies to use these this old method of using these open ed pens. And the government unfortunately just is not pushing the companies in this direction.

SPEAKER_01 46:44

And as it seems they're not, the other thing they're not doing is to put an appropriate price on the uh pollution. That's so that's how they make profit.

SPEAKER_00 46:56

Exactly. And I think you know the pollution it can it can it can vary a lot, it can be in the fjords, but another pollution is the genetic pollution. We have escapes. Um for example, in 2023 we had a pretty massive escape. And essentially what happened there is that farmers needed to block their rivers to hinder the salmon from going upstream and spawning. We have to spend a lot of time trying to get these fish out of the rivers. We had Norwegian divers, frogmen, as they're often referred to as come here. Uh we had a lot of our volunteers, about 30 volunteers, combing rivers in the Westfjords and the north of Iceland for these fish. And there was a lot of money that was spent on this operation. And the salmon farming company, which was responsible for the escape, came out in the press and said, Of course, you know, this is we're incredibly sorry for this, and we will pay for everything to send us the bill, but they still have not paid it. Which is, you know, a bit insane to be honest. So the polluter pays principle is not being used here.

SPEAKER_02 48:08

But the land-based salmon farms also they take a lot of energy. So that's something to be taken into account, I think, from an ecological perspective. Yeah. And also that there's a lot of protein put into these pens, whether they are uh l closed cages or open caged or or land-based. There's a lot of protein, like dry protein made and also brought to put into these pens to make less protein. And I think the omeka that is kind of what w they want to see in the fish, it's always less and less because there's less uh kind of fish smelt put into it. And I don't know, and I think this is just in the end a luxury product, and uh this is not something that will end hunker in the world or anything. And I think we can uh I don't know. I I want to see this just kind of we also just put like a you know, say like this is good of the land based also. Like we don't have to, you know, make everything so huge, you know, and and put so many eggs in the same baskets in in the end of the day, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 49:10

But uh so do you do you I wanted to talk about the various NGOs, maybe?

SPEAKER_03 49:17

Oh sure.

SPEAKER_01 49:18

And and I kind of wanted to bring Björk and Rosalia into this.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

But I I just want to say I agree, of course, that we need to push the government into those ways, obviously. Yeah, if you and out of sea cages.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

If we are gonna do it, we can do it in a better way.

SPEAKER_02 49:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That's the start.

SPEAKER_01 49:33

So uh there like the activism against this has been kind of regional, right? You have like in many cases, you have like your NGO is focusing on sedesfurther, you have a more general approach, you're you're w worrying about the fifty thousand remaining Icelandic uh salmon we have. And I'd like to point out I don't know, like I think we have two hundred thousand minky whales around the country, just to give context. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

Uh yeah, but also we kind of passed over the fact that how amazing the local salmon is. And this is something that is a world treasure. I'm surprised of the UNESCO awards you could give, I'm surprised they've never done anything for the fly fishing culture here.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

It's one thing that is is worth mentioning as well, which is the tourism around salmon fishing island. I mean, because we have so beautiful rivers, we have people from all over the world coming here, spending a lot of money uh to fish for salmon. And because it's it's such a profitable business in a sense, um the revenue stream that these rivers generate are super important for a lot of the farmers and landowners by these rivers. And we have about in Iceland, we have about 2,250 farms that depend on this income. For example, in the in the west of Iceland, um, close to Borkanes, it's around, I can't remember the exact number, but it's over 60% of their annual income comes from leasing out the salmon fishing rights. So if you take that away by not having the salmon there or having it, you know, the population depleted by an X amount, are they gonna be able to continue living there, farm, do all of that? So it's also a bit ironic that we're mentioning that here we have these jobs that this is creating, but it's costing us in another front another jobs. Because in in salmon fishing, recreational fishing, there's there's multiple jobs in that. It's leaseholders, it's guides, it's drivers, it's chefs, people working in the lodges.

SPEAKER_03 51:39

Decreasing them and moving them in in different quality of jobs, obviously. And this is I don't know how far back the the fly fishing um salmon river salmon fishing tourism goes. Four hundred years is possibly the most celebrated fishing tourism in the world. I usually don't want to side with kings of England, but they tend to come here, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

There are there are p pools and Icelandic rivers named after kings and who come here.

SPEAKER_03 52:10

Yeah, and still, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:11

Yeah, Prince Charles, when he was still Prince, came here a lot in the 80s.

SPEAKER_00 52:14

Uh, there's a Prince Charles pool in Hofsaw.

SPEAKER_01 52:17

There you go. And uh in Hoffirrau, uh if you're lucky enough, uh you might get free tickets to where Clapton concert, because he hangs out there somewhat.

SPEAKER_03 52:26

And the Jagger obviously is up uh goes up uh up north a little bit near um Mibaton, right? That's could be.

SPEAKER_01 52:34

There's a bunch of big names there. Big names. And and Alteler.

SPEAKER_03 52:39

Not that you want to stare at these people, but this is destroying one of the great jewels of responsible tourism.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Yeah, and I think also because even though people come here to fly fish, they spend a lot of time in Reykjavik and it's high-paying clients as well. Very high paying clients. So there's a lot there's a lot of money that distributes to all different small shops and actually unlike these companies doing the fish farming, the there's actually a trickle-down effect there.

SPEAKER_01 53:05

Yeah. And actually, like that money actually gets spread gets spread around a lot.

SPEAKER_03 53:10

Right. My connection to the McJagger story was a friend of mine was running a hotel in Mi Votten, and this was a boon to him. Basically, it floats them for a month when they come. Oh well.

SPEAKER_01 53:18

Yeah, that's nice. So we have these different NGOs for setup for different purposes. Uh but I guess there is more cooperation between them now as a lot of cooperation. A lot of cooperation. And uh we've also seen the most famous Icelander ever, Björk, like kind of enter in on the debate and to financially try to help out. There was a song put out a couple of years ago with Björk and Rosalia, a Spanish singer, put out a song. Uh which proceeds I think go into these.

SPEAKER_02 53:51

And to uh all the profits go to like helping this battle. And mostly now it's aimed for law cases.

SPEAKER_01 54:00

And that's also a thing you guys must have to pay close attention to, which is whether or not laws are being manipulated or amended in ways which help these big um salmon farming companies.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

We have had to just become total experts on all the laws regarding and we're talking about laws around uh internet cable and around sailing routes and about avalanche threats and about and we have to be on watch because if we were not, this would already be there.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

So they're using uh They're being kind of smart about it, I guess. So they're trying to like add clauses to laws that sound like they're not necessarily about fish farming to make sure that they can.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

Basically, like the the where we are kind of uh as we say, you know, it's our uh lock, if you can say so, that say this further is narrow and it holds an internet cable.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

Oh, I see.

SPEAKER_02 54:59

And uh that has uh section that is uh protected. And there is now uh a clause, like because it can't fit unless the anchors will go into this uh sec section. And now there is uh change to this law, which is very normal because this law needed to be uh updated. Uh but they added uh clause uh which would allow the minister to have uh what you call it unten though. Grant exemption to give out basically an anchor can actually go into this section. But every like every organization, everyone who m who gave a remark on this said that it's not okay. This is uh, you know, of course, like national security and you know uh apart from SFS, which is lobbying for the fish farmers. They actually are now trying to lobby for that the minister gets an exemption to put an anchor into a and and this is how far this goes.

SPEAKER_01 56:01

This is uh this is surprisingly uh reckless, I would say. There's not too long ago um a big fishing vessel pulled an anchor through the main water pipeline to the Westman Islands which doesn't have uh their own water source. Right, right. And uh I think there is still litigation and problems with who's gonna pay for the costs of fixing that. You don't want you don't want anchors anywhere near our internet cables.

SPEAKER_02 56:26

No, no, no.

SPEAKER_01 56:27

Not our internet, but it's not because we not want to like, I don't know, doom scroll, but because these we can't even like it connects us to the world. We can't even do backing unless we have these. We can no communication, like nothing what we consider a normal modern thing to be able to do in the twenty-first century. So that's that is kind of yeah. That's just one example.

SPEAKER_02 56:47

I could go on for a while talking about all the kind of like banding and you know but we are holding tight to the fact that it can't fit into Seiswürders. And I think uh that could be like if the government now does not approve and allow this uh this clause to be there, for example, that would be uh probably yeah uh you know, then then I I I'm sure they can't fit this in. And that can be maybe where where we can save our fjord.

SPEAKER_01 57:18

By the mere fact that it connects Iceland to the internet.

SPEAKER_02 57:21

Yeah, and there's also another avalanche threat. And that's if there would be an avalanche that would actually it has not been assessed if an avalanche would go and take the anchors and it would be like a you know, even uh escapee or like an environmental disaster happening because of that. That has not been evaluated. And according to law, that needs to be evaluated. Yes. And this like no we we have no answer on this, for example. Okay. And a few more things.

SPEAKER_01 57:49

Where we hold on tight that will actually No, I I mean it's very interesting to get the input about like how individually specific the uh the fight against these fish farms can be for each and every fjord.

SPEAKER_02 58:03

Uh, yeah, it's it's also interesting that just like normal people living their need to go through all of this when uh when it has been clear you know right from the beginning that uh it doesn't fit.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

No, and I think and we should also like maybe emphasize a point from earlier on, which is that the general population of Iceland isn't interested in getting fish farms. No. And in many cases in these villages, even though they're suffering, the majority there is not necessary for it either, but still they get them, which is kind of just tells you how much power there is uh for some of these lobbies here.

SPEAKER_03 58:39

Yeah, you kind of picture Dan Zay Lewis sh showing up in a church and demanding the oil, right?

SPEAKER_02 58:43

Right from the I can at least tell you that if you will see news on Sayage Verders having uh fish that they will get the fish farming license in Sayers Verdir, then we definitely know who runs this country. Right. It's not uh it they are working then very much to serve the the fish farming companies.

SPEAKER_00 59:02

Yeah, and and I think one of the interesting uh examples of that as well is now there there's a new bill surrounding salmon farming being discussed uh in Parliament and in a committee. And while that is all happening, the EFTA surveillance authority came out and said, It seems like the licenses that you've given out for the sea cage industry uh they don't fit with the EU water framework uh commitment that you have. Can you, you know, please clarify clarify that and explain that? And they haven't responded to that. They had until February to do that. They haven't done it, and they're just continuing to push the bill through, knowing that it goes against it.

SPEAKER_02 59:47

And at the same time, we're gonna vote on the EU.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

Yeah, the same parties are trying to get into the EU. And it's it's just interesting.

SPEAKER_01 59:55

The same parties are trying to get into the EU? Yeah, I mean the current ruling coalition is pushing for this bill, knowing it's probably against the EEA uh agreement we have. So at the same time, they're trying to join the EU, which will be cutting on with the conversation there.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:10

I will note that the the pushback we're having against starting discussion of EU are tend to be from the people who own the fisheries.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:17

Yeah. The umbrella organization for both the commercial fishing for cod and all that and salmon farming is Fisheries Iceland, S of S.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:26

Yes, this is where it goes back to the whole discussion about who actually runs this country, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:31

Well it does because we we attended the press conference for the for the um EU and the uh Minister of Fisheries, and then uh we've been in discussion, I've been in discussion a great deal with um people in Scotland and Wales who are pushing more towards independence than you would expect because they want to be part of EU and have a little bit more protection. And Scotland is obviously a key example because they've been hit by fish farms and um had a massive protest movement come back. Two things that they have in common with Iceland, Alcoa and fish farms, and the r the environmental response. You don't and this is what I wanted to go to next on the question one doesn't isn't born an environmentalist. It tends to be you have to have something taken from you that you don't think people can take from you to become an environmentalist. Like as you were saying, oh, the resource of a fjord. Well, that's what are you talking about? A resource. That's the fjord. That's that's a resource. Um exactly. That was kind of one wanting to ask, I guess. Alice, how did you get into this environmentalism?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:34

That's a really good point. Um I think growing up, I used to fish a lot with my my dad. Yeah. For salmon, trout, whatever. And he always mentioned the fact regarding salmon that they were such a unique species that you know they would, you know, come up the river, it would spawn, the eggs would hatch in a specific pool.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:58

It would spend four years in the river, go out to the ocean, travel to Greenland, and then come back to the exact same river and the exact same pool.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:06

And I just thought that was such a unique thing, and it just gave me such a huge respect for salmon. And at the same time, my dad was always talking about the fact that we have this guy called Orri Vichfuson, the founder of NASF, who founded it, founded it in 1989, a long time ago. And he was a business guy, uh a right-sided capitalist that decided to pay people to stop unsustainable fishing of salmon. And you know, he fought the the uh the first couple of waves of salmon farming and and all that, and and then you know, at one point we just saw the population go down, and you thought, how can how can we change that? And it was at the same time that my my father unfortunately passed away. I'm sorry. And I remembered that he was so fond of the NASF fund and what they were doing. So I just reached out, started volunteering, and then just kind of got stuck in the rabbit hole that is salmon conservation, and and here I am. But I think it it's also had a deeper thing rooted in I think a lot of Icelandic people. Uh we spend a lot of our summers out and about, and nature becomes so connected to you, and you realize that it's it's a big part of why we have a good life here. People travel up here, the tourism has saved us on numerous occasions, and and this is just something that you really, really want to fight.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:34

Something about the connection to uh fishing and to um just the animals that you know, not wanting them to disappear. Um we have the same thing in America with cutthroat that that's part of my childhood, and then uh and to to imagine it being wiped out. You said fifty thousand species 50,000 uh animals, for lack of a better term, 50,000 trout or 50,000 salmon remaining. What was it when you were a child?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:59

Hmm, that's a really good question. Um I think I'm I'm unlucky for the fact that I'm I'm so young that I didn't really witness Iceland when it was, you know, had the great runs of salmon. Um but I would presume that when I started fishing, it was probably about three times the amount we have now, at least two times.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:21

Which is devastating then.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:22

Which is devastating, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:24

Benedicta, can I can I turn it over to you and ask your history with this? And because again, we all have such different histories and different uh interpretations, even of uh capitalism and like we're saying, we're now speaking. I'm sharing a viewpoint with a king of England, which is uh something I would never wish on upon my children, but somehow that's where we are at. And uh, you know, locking hands with a capitalist uh like um entrepreneur who then realized, well, I want money, but you know, if you have all the money in the world and your home was destroyed, it really doesn't make the money worthwhile. Benedicta, what's your history with the environment?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:00

I think I of course agree. I think we have like this incredible uh what do you call it, like luxury here in Iceland. We have nature so much around us. So, you know, I was in the countryside when I was a kid. Yeah. And I think it's mostly about just being connected to yourself and you like having an intuition and and you know, feeling that you're a part of this earth, you know, that this is a balance. We if we you know, we cannot just be kings of this planet. And and I think like, you know, David Attenborough and Jane Goodall and all these incredible environmentalists, it just talks straight to my heart. Like we, you know, it's incredibly stupid to ruin your only home. You know, and we need to uh protect and you know, of course we need to find ways, but we we should be sensible and we are clever and we figured out all this technology and but now there's just this greed controlling this uh world. And we see like what is this about in the end. What we are discussing, it's just about greed. These are very greedy people and they there's never enough. You know, and we are not and that's what it's about. And it's not about anything else. It's not about these societies, it's not about anything that they're saying. It's about you know that they're not he there in these furts to create jobs because they really want to save their, you know what I mean? It's so you see this. And this started for me, of course, like everything. I feel my life has just always peddled me where I should be. And I I've trusted the flow of life. I've traveled a lot and seen I I was traveling in Chile, for example, and I was like, why is all this salmon here? You know, it makes no sense like talking to the people there and seeing the protests, uh, and not thinking about that I would ever end up in a in a in a place like this, where I would be fighting this and spending so much time and and uh on this. But um, yeah, so when this came to our fjord, I we just right away, of course, like, no, this is not going to happen. And we you know, we don't want this to happen. So we went through all the neighborhoods of Sedeswerder and asked people what their thoughts were, and we made like a signature, like a petition, you know, petition and and petition, and it was obvious there that people did not want this, and then we knew we had to give it all because we knew that we were fighting obviously huge capital that had so like we can't imagine what is under there for them. Like they need to get these licenses because this is worth so much because they got it before as we talked about in the beginning. And and that's just how I you know swirled into this chapter of my life.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:44

But so we have a similar perspective because I'd seen I've seen this whole whole play before, and it's astonishing when it comes to your home, which is this is obviously my adoptive home.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:54

But exactly, exactly. And but uh yeah, it's been uh like everything in life, uh uh uh like a school of it, like a university degree in so many aspects.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:06

But uh I think uh because I mentioned before the show, uh I was talking about there was uh concert that Bjork organized here in 2008, uh nature conservation concert that Damon Alburn played. Yeah. And he was being interviewed uh on the state broadcaster, uh national broadcaster roof, uh which was peculiar in its own way because he was framed as a haspin when he had just started the Gorillas, the biggest success date.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:33

We yeah, as uh we were I helped cover that and I remember him being the number one artist in the world. And they said that he was the former singer of Blue.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:41

Like a nice like a band in from Britain and but like the thing that stayed with me was he was saying uh you know we you know Britain kinda d destroyed a lot of its nature through its you know, coming up with the industrial revolution and then taking it through to its conclusion. And he was saying, like, well you missed out on that. But uh that means you don't have to go through this art. You don't have to. There's no existential need for you to destroy the nature you have. And that applies to the fish farms as much as anything else here. But we at the end of the day do not need them. Exactly. Like we they they're they're not they're not being put there for our benefit. They're only being put there in an in a sense to take away the things we enjoy here. So we have to kind of be mindful of that also, that these are not things we need to do because there's an existential threat to our livelihood in this country as a country or a population.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:44

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:45

Even though it may be true for like a couple of individuals in some of these towns that live currently off of these things, but by God, I would know you can always get a new job at something else. So that's also a part of it. It's we don't need this.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:58

Exactly. So so we have the family connection that environmentalism, and then we have the reaction to injustice, and then we have Brit pop bringing people to be able to do that. Yeah, Brit pop, Brit pop. So fantastic. So this has been the drop-in, but we do have to mention that there's April 29th. We're gonna be expediting this podcast because there's an April 29th event.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:18

There's the April 29th event. I would like you to repeat that just for the end of the show. You're screening.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:23

We're screening Salmon Nation. And we will have a panel uh from the kind of people from the NGOs and also then the parliamentarians that are in the committee that are now uh going over the aquaculture bill. So they are actually, you know, should be deep in with knowledge on that. And so we will also go into a discussion with them and hopefully we'll have a good full audience in B.O. Paradise. What time? And uh begins at 7 30.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:55

Okay. Very good to know. People should look that up.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:59

Then we have the Puffin uh Puffin Strike.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:01

And then we should we will then we should talk about the Puffin Strike, which you can see live down on Leichotork in the old sales tower.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:08

Yes. Have a bit of a pop-up store there, and um we have that open until May 15th. So people should definitely come and and learn more about the topic, and we have different different uh stuff for sale as well. We have postcards, we have stickers, plushies, and we are also uh asking people to send a postcard letter to uh the parliament.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:34

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:34

So people can write their personal messages. And here we have the the two iconic species that we have in Iceland. We have the salmon and we have the puffin. And they have it in common that their populations have both declined by around 70 percent for the past 30, 40 years. Uh so they are now working together to uh at least a better future. Yeah, a better future, and you know, stop C cage salmon farming.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:01

Well, Benedict and Ilias, thank you so much for dropping in and explaining this whole fight against salmon farming in in Iceland to us. Uh, I hope you people listening or or watching will find avenues of helping their uh struggle financially or morally, or by making uh choices as consumers. Um until next time, goodbye.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:25

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.