Takeaways from Norway, a Nation Devoted to Seafood Sustainability
By Bob Leahy • 27 June 2023
Photographs by Tone Molnes for the Norwegian Seafood Council UK
Aboard the fishing vessel Atlantic, cod and haddock fillets are prepared within hours of their catch using a range of automated and manual processes.
On a lukewarm February day in London’s Park Plaza Hotel, I gathered around a table with my Fish City colleagues, all of us dressed to the nines, for the biggest day in the fish and chip industry calendar, the National Federation of Fish Friers’ National Fish and Chip Awards.
We were already having the time of it: an amazing day out on the town, a boozy seafood lunch in Soho, a whirlwind tour of the usual tourist hotspots, I even snuck in a shopping trip to Liberty. Our team was up for two national awards, which itself is an amazing achievement, and yet we all were keeping our expectations firmly planted on the floor beneath our feet.
Each time the winner of our category was announced – “Fish City!” – we erupted from our chairs. The awards themselves – the Environment and Sustainability Award, and the UK’s Fish and Chip Restaurant of the Year – are tremendous validation of the many things put in place and that we do daily to limit our impact on the environment, promote seafood sustainability to the public, and provide excellent food and a top-notch dining experience to our customers. The winners of each category also won a study trip to Norway provided by headline sponsor the Norwegian Seafood Council to learn about the country’s responsible fisheries management practices. As the spring progressed, I was delighted to be invited by our owners Grainne and John Lavery as a guest on the study trip to Ålesund.
From our in-house sustainability training, I already knew that the Icelandic, Norwegian and Barents Seas are the source of the vast majority of the cod and haddock eaten here in the UK, where stocks of these deep-sea fish are healthiest. Stocks of cod and haddock in the seas around the UK and Ireland are under pressure, and I know that we at Fish City want these stocks to recover. Here in the UK, we eat more cod and haddock than any other nation and serve it up most often in our fish and chip shops and restaurants. As one of our fry chefs, I enjoy the delight of our customers after they’ve tucked into our award-winning fish and chips– all our cod and haddock MSC-certified sustainably sourced, and our chips cut fresh every morning.
When it came time to pack for the trip ahead of a very early morning flight from Belfast International Airport, the excitement fully set in. I had my phone at the ready to take photos of anything and everything new and different. On the flight from Oslo to Ålesund, I looked out my window over the skies of southern Norway, the steep peaks of the Jotunheimen, snow-capped even in midsummer with glaciers that have over hundreds of thousands of years carved out the fjords leading out toward the sea.
The Ålesund-based longliner fishing vessel Atlantic as seen from the water during our study trip. The small figures standing at the ship’s bow provide some indication of the size of the vessel.
Aboard the Atlantic
With the other winners of the National Fish and Chip Awards, we arrived in on a warm Tuesday evening and awoke the following morning to blazing polar sunshine. I had seen many fellow winners on the stage in London, and yet it was great to meet them in a more relaxed setting, gathered at the Storneskaia pier in Ålesund, ready for an eventful day aboard the Norwegian longliner fishing vessel Atlantic.
Longline fishing is a traditional fishing method of trailing a long line of baited hooks to attract the target species. It can be problematic in catching non-target fish, seabirds and other marine life, so longline fisheries certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council require careful management and improved monitoring programmes. Atlantic’s merging of longline fishing with green technologies make it an innovative, climate-friendly producer of cod and haddock fillets for the UK market, as well as fillets of tusk, ling and saithe for the local Norwegian market and for export.
Taking the ramp up to the vessel, I got a real sense of how large it is. The Atlantic is 64 meters long, which means its size puts it just above the classification of a superyacht and in megayacht territory. We were welcomed by owner Kjell Gunnar Hoddevik, his family and the crew, and shown around the spacious and well-appointed vessel. Unlike coastal fishing boats that set out to sea for up to 24 hours at a time, the Atlantic goes out to sea for a month at a time; and, to keep the workers well fed they maintain a large galley, mess (dining room) and scullery, which surprised me given how tight space can be even in a restaurant (on land!) for all these functions.
The Atlantic is by all assessments a floating factory, with many processes across the operation entirely automated, including the sorting, weighting, heading and cleaning of the fish, as well as the packing and processing of the fillets. Why automated? We were told by the owner Kjell that it would just be far too expensive to pay good wages for all this work if done by hand; automation also gives the crew more time to focus on tasks that are not easily automated. Its baited 8,000-meter longline consists of 60,000 hooks, of which about 10 percent need serviced by hand each day. Along those thousands of hooks is placed a patent-pending bait product made with locally sourced mackerel.
We learned that when caught, the fish are anaesthetised before being cut and bled by hand, with the recognition that fish are living creatures and should be handled gently and properly. Outside the fishing industry, many might think fishing boats just throw a net, catch fish and bring it to market, but even at a smaller scale, fishing is so much more complex and demanding than that. Particularly on the Atlantic, so much thought had been put into staff working conditions and the quality of the final product. Even the by-products are carefully considered; cuttings from fillet production are frozen for sale to other companies on shore that use the residual raw material for new products. As we took the sea route inland through jaw-droppingly beautiful landscapes, I could not help but appreciate how much work, investment, and ingenuity goes into sourcing the fish we in the UK enjoy at our local chippies and restaurants.
The sustainability of a fish stock is in part determined by assessing over time its biomass, the total number of fish counted in a specific area multiplied by the average weight of the fish sampled.
Managing Fisheries Sustainably
Aboard the Atlantic, we were told about Norway’s regulatory environment, from the country’s Marine Resources Act, which by law serves to protect the sustainability of their fisheries, to its ban on discards, which was implemented over 30 years prior to fellow EU nations. Norway has very strict catch limits, or quotas, that are enforced by the Norwegian Coast Guard. Nearly 70 percent of the Coast Guard’s resources go in to ensuring that fishing activities are in line with Norwegian regulations. Fishing vessels are boarded as often as daily to monitor that their quotas are not exceeded.
Quotas are the subject of continuous research and assessment by regulators, industry representatives and scientists, all with the long-term viability of fish stocks in mind. To minimise the risk of catching younger fish that have not yet reproduced, fish stocks are constantly monitored for where they are in the ocean at any given moment and what age they are. Rules are in place that also ban destructive fishing practices and equipment in order to minimise the catch of undersized fish and non-target species, as well as to preserve the quality of the final product. Fisheries in Norway cannot start fishing in a new vessel unless they have a quota allocated specifically to that vessel from a set national quota. The amount of research put into Norway’s stock management and the teeth they put into implementing responsible fishing practices is nothing short of exemplary.
“I am blown away at the commitment of the Norwegians to their fishing industry and thankful that I had the opportunity to learn more about it.”
In all the adventures set out in the itinerary– enjoying the local seafood and cuisine, walking the pastel-hued streets of Ålesund lined with rainbow flags for Pride, experiencing the Norwegian fishing fleet’s sustainable fishing practices firsthand, and touring Ellingsøy whitefish producer Brødrene Sperre– we all were so warmly welcomed by the Norwegian people. I am blown away at the commitment of the Norwegians to their fishing industry and thankful that I had the opportunity to learn more about it. It would be remiss of me not to thank Victoria Braathen of the Norwegian Seafood Council and the NSC delegation, the crew of the Atlantic, the Norwegian Fishing Vessels Owners Association, Sunnmøre & Romsdal Fisheries Sales Organisation, the team at Brødrene Sperre, and all the wonderful people I met in Norway for the time and learning. ∎
Participants of the Fish & Chip Study Programme, the 2023 winners of the National Fish & Chip Awards, along with representatives of the Norwegian Seafood Council and the crew of the Atlantic.
