Worry about ocean farmed salmon
"Throughout the years I have been bringing a lot of my friends here to flyfish for the first time and all of them have unforgettable memories from those trips, says . They have þeir eignast hér allir ógleymanlegar minningar," says the Brit, James Adeane. mbl.is/Einar Falur Ingólfsson
For almost half a century, the friends Joe Hudson from the US and Jeames Adeane from the UK, have been fishing for salmon in Iceland, and they don’t like the threat of farming salmon in sea cages poses to the Atlantic salmon. The fishing partners discuss salmon fishing in Iceland in an interview in the Sunday newspaper Morgunblaðið. They say that in many countries salmon fishing has in recent years been declining and what has been happening in Scotland and the Kola Peninsula is an example of this.
Both have been to Iceland regularly since they were young men, especially to catch salmon and have had experience in fishing in many of the country’s best rivers.
Veiðifélagarnir Joe Hudson og James Adeane hafa stundað laxveiðar á Íslandi í nær hálfa öld. mbl.is/Einar Falur Ingólfsson
"It's something that's the most satisfying and exciting thing you can do," Hudson says of the hunting passion.
“The salmon is one of the most striking symbols of wild nature to be found — if there is wild salmon in the rivers, it’s an affirmation of a healthy nature,” says Hudson. “If the salmon disappears, then nature is in trouble.”
Adeane says that the bad experience of the Norwegians and the Scots with salmon farming in sea cages should be a warning to the Icelanders. “Now we know very well what a hazard this practice is to the environment, right? We know that sea farming can have serious consequences. But there is a lot of pressure from producers to get access to the fjords and widespread greed in that process. I hear that here in Iceland the fight against the farming companies is difficult, as elsewhere.”
