When the late Orri Vigfússon passed away a few years ago, the NASF went into a sort of turmoil. The NASF had been working in divisions all over the realm of the Atlantic salmon but Orri had his thumb on all procedures. For a while no one actually knew what would happen next. Several important matters needed addressing. Step forward the unlikely Friðleifur Egill Guðmundsson, a young attourney whom helped Orri now and again with legal matters regarding the NASF. Anglingiceland.is spoke with Friðleifur a while back and he told us how the NASF was rebuilt.
Friðleifur is only young and a self employed attorney and according to himself he somehow “hobbled into working with Orri” “I started working for the NASF when Orri was taken ill. I worked on NASF matters in the USA, and also here in Iceland. I was Orri‘s legal advisor in various matters. But it was never my intention to take it any further. Things did though change when he died. I spoke to NASF USA and it was decided that we should check on all of the outstanding NASF commitments. In Iceland, we took on the Faroe Islands and Greenland to see if it was possible to stay on track with what had been going on and from where the neccessary funds were to come from. All were agreed that Orri‘s lifes work should not be allowed to float away, as he had been able to accompish something that none other had, to buy out high sea netting of Atlantic salmon from 1991. With Orri gone, we set up an Icelandic NASF division which includes apart from myself, Elvar Friðriksson, Friðrik D. Stefánsson and Jón G. Baldvinsson. We opened up some serious research and today all the NASF divisions are indipendant and working diligently, mostly with the same people that Orri had recruited and would never let him down.
It is no secret that Atlantic salmon stocks are holding their own in isolated regions but looking at the big picture they have actually been in free fall for years. For various reasons, but mostly due to the high sea netting that Orri managed to stop. The first thing that the NASF Iceland division did was to sit down with the Faroese to see if we could continue our prosperous cooporation, and it turned out that they were happy to continue.
However as far as Greenland was concerned, we had not had a deal with them for several years. It was more complicated to find a solution and myself and Elvar Friðriksson twice visited the Greenlanders to forward to them our ideas. It worked out to perfection as it went and the NASF along with The Atlantic Salmon Federation in Canada thrashed out a twelve year deal with the Greenlanders. An absolute giant of a deal for the conservation of the Atlantic salmon. At the same time, we were putting pen to paper with the Faroese, so things went really fruitfully as we were effectively allowing thousands of Atlantic Salmon to return to their spawning grounds all along the North Atlantic. The feeding grounds around the Faroe Islands and Greenland are hugely important and by stopping the netting we aspire to get the Atlantic salmon stocks to their former heights, it is the least we can do when someone like Orri Vigfússon gave it 27 years of his life.”
To this must be added though that after the interview was conducted, it turned out that the Greenlanders had actually caught at least half more than the agreement allowed and that is now under investigation.
So, what next for the NASF? Friðleifur is quick to tell us that another no less devastating danger lurks for wild Atlantic salmon stocks. It has been there for years in Norway and the UK and is finding its feet in Iceland these weeks and months. And in the coming years. The danger of sea ranching in open pens, along with the danger of genetic blending with wild stocks as escapees mingle with the wild salmon, sea lice epidemics along with remarkable pollution around the pens and the danger of despises.
Friðleifur says: „The Icelandic parliament has these matters under discussion and landowners, anglers and conservationists are far from happy with the way things are heading. To start with, the Icelandic open pen rearing companies are mostly owned by Norwegian giants and the salmon used are of Norwegian origin which has no genetic ties with the Icelandic salmon stocks, potentially making the blending even more serious than that has decimated so many wild stock, f.e. in Norway, Scotland and Ireland. As it stands, we are afraid that the Parliament will not take sufficient steps to stand guard of the wild Icelandic salmon and that the damage could in the long run be nothing less than devastating. There is no talk of closed pens, no talk of inland ranching although in Iceland the facilities are there. It so happens that it is more expensive and that pushes them off the table.”
We are now focusing on the open pen ranching and are working in close collaboration with the NASF in the USA, France, Scotland and Norway along with the Atlantic salmon fund in Canada. To put things into better perspective, that at the same time that alternative ways of rearing the salmon are pushed aside, more than a million US dollars are spent on sea lice poison that is blended into the water around the pens, with no regard to anything that may be living in close quarters. Why not take this money and use it to build a safer way of salmon rearing? All this is very extreme. Still on the perspective part, it has been reported that up to 20 percent of salmon die in open pens due to sea lice. I’ll tell you, my wife runs a chicken factory and if her fatalities were anywhere close to these statistic she would be closed down in a minute. So, I do not see why fish do not fall into this category. Perhaps it’s due to them having cold blood but for me that is no argument. All this is ridiculous, the Icelandic spawning stock is at best somewhere between 50 and 60 thousand salmon, yet the plans are for up to 4,5 million pen reared salmon in Icelandic fiords. Taking into account the frequency of escapes and the sheer numbers that quite often get out, Icelandic salmon stocks are actually doomed if no other path is taken. Already escapees are being caught in Icelandic rivers, so it has begun.”