Arctic Frontiers 2017 UiT, nfh, January 24 2017 Sustainable seafood for healthy diets and improved nutrition

Arctic Frontiers 2017

Sustainable seafood for healthy diets and improved nutrition.

Allow me to start by acknowledging the Ministry for asking us to arrange this event, and to UiT, Norwegian Fisheries College for joining in and making this possible.

During the three hours of this side event at Arctic Frontiers 2017, we have taken a more global perspective on the Food and Nutrition security situation of the World in the years to come. Especially we have focused on the role Seafood may have in that perspective.

We were warmly welcomed by Rektor Anne Husebekk, who underlined the importance for seafood in relation to the UN Sustainable development goals, especially to eradicate hunger and preserve the ocean environment.

The scene was set by Minister of Fisheries, Mr. Per Sandberg,who outlined this issue in general, political terms, and as we heard, he was underlining that Norway want to have a leading role in promoting Seafood in a Food and Nutrition security perspective. “We are in the middle of a blue revolution” he said, and “food from the ocean must play a bigger role”. “The ocean will take care of us if we take care of the ocean” he concluded.

Nevertheless, seafood have a rather limited role as food, providing 2 % only of the Food that the present World population consume.

Jogeir Toppe (FAO) gave an overview of the state of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture, showing that world fisheries are actually declining slightly, while Aquaculture is growing by 3 % annually. By 2020 Aquaculture will be bigger than the wild fisheries. But still fish consumption is low in most countries, especially in Africa. However, its an important source for proteins, and for vitamins and micronutrients.

Then we heard Edel Elvevoll (UiT) and Gro Ingunn Hemre (NIFES) elaborate on how seafood may prevent hidden hunger, malnutrition and possibly combat some non communicable diseases. Obviously Seafood has potential in a Food and Nutrition perspective on a global scale, when hearing that 2 billion suffer malnutrition and nearly 2 billion people struggle with obesity. And only in Iceland babies have sufficient iodine status.

Geir Huse from IMR talked about sustainable harvest of wild fish stocks, and on the potential of fishing and harvesting lower in the food chain like on the mesopelagic fish species. Definetly, there might be potential for an increased harvest from the world oceans if such fisheries develops, especially since the abundance of these species up to now has been underestimated by a factor of 10, as claimed in the scientific literature recently.

But as we heard in the panel debated during the plenary session yesterday morning, there are quite strong voices arguing against fishing further down the food web, like on krill in the Antarctic. And skepticism was even expressed on aquaculture in general as more fish are going in as food than being produced as consumable seafood.

But I must say Anders Karlson-Drangsholt (Bellona) gave hope with his project, an integrated, multi-trophic aquaculture concept combing fish farming, mussel farming and seaweed production. Such a concept would reduce the environmental footprint of fish farming by recycling the nutrients released from spilled feed and fish feces, as well as producing edible seafood. In this way the sustainability of fish farming will be improved, as well as more food actually may be produced from the ocean. Probably, such multi-trophic aquaculture concepts are need for the future.

And finally, Thorbjørn Thorvik (Dir. of Fisheries) underlined the necessity of proper management systems to secure both sustainable fisheries at all levels of the food chain, and elaborated in particular on Norw. Management of Calanus finnmachicus and the mesopelagics. Ant it’s good to see there is progress, in the early 2000’ at IMR we didn’t advice any fishery for Calanus, just an experimental quota of about 1000 tons.

So the presentations at this side event have been of a rather general character, and not especially related to the White spaces and the Blue future of the Arctic. But as we have heard the last years, the Arctic is definetly opening up more and more, ice is retreating, and more waters open to primary production and fish stocks follows. The biomass of the Barents Sea is now about 1.8 of what it was 15 years ago. And there are huge shifts in fish distribution in the high north. Myself, I have had the strange experience of fishing six mackerel, I lost another three, in the Icefjord at 79° 30’ North in September 2013. This is the northernmost catches of Atlantic mackerel ever, and it came as a huge surprise. We had never thought mackerel could swim this far North, into waters of just 6° C.

When living in Longyearbyen, Svalbard for nearly four years, I took the opportunity to quantify the Norwegian Fisheries in the Svalbard zone, the northernmost fisheries in the world, occurring all the way up to about 81° North. In value, it turned out to be about 4 % of the Norwegian Fisheries, now it is at a level of about 1 billion Norwegian kroner annually. Mostly gadoids, North Easth Arctic Cod and Haddock and Arctic Shrimps are caught in these waters. But the value and quantity are increasing year by year. And if we fish the capelin in the High North summer, as we did in the seventies and eighties, the volume could have been substantial also, up to more than 700 000 tons annually. And in a food security perspective we might have to reconsider our harvest control rules for the Barents Sea, where capelin is regarded mostly as food for cod.

So in the years to come, I am sure the Arctic will be relevant in a food security context through sustainable harvest of fish and other living marine resources that will use the habitats that is now opening up in the High North.

To predict the development of the fisheries and marine harvest in the Arctic in the years to come, we have quite good models based on observations, quite long time series, and knowledge on marine ecosystem functioning. But I am sure there will be many surprised, as with the snow crab now quite abundant in the Barents Sea, I heard about it first time in a Symposium in Moscow under the Joint Norwegian – Russian fisheries commission in 2010. And as with the Atlantic mackerel appearing suddenly in Svalbard in 2013.

Science programs like the Nansen heritage program now starting to receive the first funding are needed to understand and predict the development with a certain degree of accuracy, as well as development of appropriate management systems.

So thank you all for joining us in this Session, and thanks to the speakers especially for very good presentations, and to Livar for charing the session, easily and professionally. The session has been very interesting, relevant and stimulating. I have learned a lot. And finally, in an Arctic context, I am sure the potential for increased fisheries and seafood harvest will be an increasingly prioritized issue in the years to come.