The World’s Hunger for Salmon Is Linked to an Ecological Disaster

Originally published on Bloomberg.com on May 4, 2024 as “The World’s Hunger for Salmon Is Linked to an Ecological Disaster”

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.

Norway produces more than half of the world’s farmed salmon. Last year, farms exported $17 billion of fish, and the government has pushed the industry to expand five-fold by 2050. The sector contributes around 3% of Norway’s GDP, according to industry estimates.

Yet that success has put herring at risk. The fish plays a central role in the Baltic Sea’s ecosystem and, with stocks down 90% since the 1960s, scientists are sounding an ever-louder alarm that the population could collapse. That would endanger biodiversity in a sea shared by nine European countries. The crisis has sparked a debate over the best way to save the dwindling herring stock.

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Photo by Barnabas Davoti.