Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
try's few commercial resources in the days before oil - an essential context to understand-
ing many of Norway's environmental policies as they relate to fishing.
State of the Environment Norway (
www.environment.no
) is a comprehensive site covering
everything from biodiversity and international agreements to statistics and Svalbard.
Fish Farming
The aquaculture industry, which has thrived for at least two decades and was born out of
the depletion of wild-fish stocks, concentrates mainly on Atlantic salmon and trout, but
there have also been experiments with Arctic char, halibut, catfish and scallops. Currently,
fish farming amounts to around 500,000 tonnes of fish per annum, but the export of pen-
raised salmon and trout constitutes 55% of the value of Norway's fish exports.
This ready-made alternative to ocean fishing does carry attendant and potentially serious
consequences. The main drawback is that diseases in captive stock spread to wild popula-
tions whenever fish escape from the pens, thereby threatening wild populations. Tightened
government regulations have reduced escapes in recent years, but it remains an issue of
major concern.
In the respected Environmental Performance Index for 2010, operated by the Yale Center
for Environmental Law and Policy (epi.yale.edu), Norway ranked 10th out of 178 countries
(down from second in 2008).
Sealing
In Norway seal hunting is restricted to the harp seal. The government's support for seal
hunting - it provides funding for sealing vessels and sets an annual quota of between
30,000 and 50,000 seals - is mainly driven by the needs of the fishing community, which
wishes to restrict the competition between fishing boats and marine mammals that depend
on fish and eat up to 2.5kg per day. Seal meat is also considered a delicacy in many re-
gions of coastal Norway. Even so, the Norwegian sealing industry is in serious decline,
with actual culls amounting to barely 10% of the allocated quota.
To mitigate protests, regulations limit seal hunters to only two tools: a rifle and a
hakapik,
or gaff; the former is for adult seals and the latter for pups (which may not be
