Scientist chat

Interviewing Sten Siikavuopio, a senior scientist at Nofima, about just about everything regarding the king crabs and the sea urchins invading the Norwegian coast.

About the king crabs

The king crabs were introduced to the Barents Sea outside in the early 60s and were first discovered in 1976 in Norwegian waters. Today the stock has spread westwards all the way to Hammerfest. It is found further south and west that Hammerfest, but that is mostly singular individuals. In the area from Hammerfest and eastwards along the Kola Peninsula, the king crabs have entered as good as every fjord and are also going quite far north.

For a long time the catching of king crab was forbidden in the Barents Sea, but from 2002 the government lanced catching quotas. Today, the Norwegian state has decided use two different strategies in regarding the king crabs. They are doing destruction fishery south and west of Hammerfest to try to extinct the stock. On the eastern side of Hammerfest, on the other hand, they are executing commercial fishery and ustainable management of the stock. “As a scientist, this strategy of “yes please, both” is quite difficult to understand. How they are planning on stopping the crabs from crossing the invisible line, is beyond my understanding.” When the larvae are hatched, they are floating around in the water for about a month. This means that they can easily spread very far, and even follow boats to the southern coasts. And even though the king crabs likes it better in cold waters of about 4 degrees, they can survive in up to 20 degrees for shorter periods.

Can you breed the king crabs?

Nofima has been doing research on that since 1994, and we have found that it is very difficult to do breeding of kin crab in a profitable manner. That is because it takes too long to go from the starting product to the sellable, profitable product. After the crabs have reached 700 – 800 grams, they only change their shells once a year and following, the growth isn’t very big. Most producers want the crabs to be about 6 kilos when they sell them, and that takes from 7 to 10 years when breeding from larvae. But in the latest years, an aquaculture based on catching has started growing, and this has proved to be very fruitful. They catch the wild crabs and then keep them in captivity and feed them for 2 – 6 months until they are fat enough to be sold.

Can you catch the king crabs all year round?

Yes, you can, but the season is primarily in the autumn from October to January, after the crabs have eaten well during the summer. The autumn is the season for the commercial fishery. The worst time is in February – March when it is changing its shell. The new big thing in king crab fishery is that you can now catch both male and female crabs. This means that we can sell king crab roe which is a very luxurious product similar to Russian caviar. If we get an export of this roe up and running, we will have a good potential of great profitability.

The sea urchins

Yes, the sea urchins have a very special history. Did you know that there are over 400 species of them in the world, and that we harvest only 10 of these species? The little green one, droebachiensis, is the most popular one. This is also the type of sea urchin that we have the most of on the Norwegian coast.

How is the market for sea urchin now?

The top was reached in 1995 when we had the all time largest catching statistics of 125 000 tons sold in the world. But after 1995 the stocks have been overpopulated and are decreasing and diminishing in size. Most of the sea urchins are caught from growing wild, and exported alive. Much of the sea urchins go to France and Europe, but Japan is the absolute largest consumer. They eat 90 % of the world production of sea urchins! The French are eating the sea urchins raw, served directly on the plate, but in Japan they have lots of different producers and are refining the sea urchins in to over 40 different products. In Europe also you can find particular use of the sea urchins; in Malta they are making pasta sauce of them, and in other parts of the region, they make for instance dessert soufflé.

So can Norway join this market?

Yes, well we are in the both lucky an unfortunate position that our coast is over-populated of sea urchins. This is in fact an ecological disaster! A surface on the size of Senja, Norways biggest island, has been eaten down. Actually, it is my opinion that the Norwegian government should rather have given the 4 billion NOKs they are giving to the Amazon rainforest, to the kelp forests of our northern coast. The sea urchins have eaten 50 000 tons of harvestable bio mass that we could have eaten. The loss of the kelp also makes the fishes go away and the fjords are slowly dying if nothing is done.

How is the process of breeding sea urchins?

It is not very common to breed the urchins from larvae because it takes too long. The better way is to catch them from the wild and then breed them up to a suitable size – like with the king crabs. The sea urchins grow evidently smaller and have less roe in them when there are too many of them. The down side of producing sea urchins this way is that to catch them you have to dive down and pick them up. However, we are actually working on developing a miniature submarine to increase the efficiency of this catching process. In Norway there are only two companies that are breeding sea urchins from roe at the moment, but more and more producers based on catching. In Maine, USA and in Japan they put out several million sea urchins every year, and there this is a million dollar industry.

How are they transported? Isn’t there a limit of only 3 days after packing?

No, that is completely nonsense! They can very well be eaten up to 10 days after packing. You know, this is animals without a heart and brain, they can manage perfectly fine over a longer period of time. But I think that in a long term perspective, all export of sea urchin from Norway will be refined. Have you seen the commercial for Nora jam? The one with all the ladies making jam? Well, in Chile they are packing sea urchins like that. I went to a factory where there were 400 ladies packing! They have over 4 000 licences for catching sea urchins over there. In Norway it’s not even regulated yet. By the way, the king crabs can also be sent alive. They are for instance sending living crabs to Switzerland. And a company in Lakselv is going to send 12 tons of king crab to Moscow this year.

Are you working on any new form for breeding at the moment?

Well, you know that the king crab and the sea urchin are the most luxurious products, but we are now working on a breeding installation in Kirkenes, where they will breed char. This is a type of fish that needs to be bred in a closed land based plant. It is actually getting half of its financing from the Russians who have great interest in the fishing industry. They are a country of much resource when it comes to lakes and fresh water, but not on sea water. They have a great potential in developing breeding installations for fresh fish over there. Pinro and Veniro, the biggest companies in the Russian science industry, are working on many subjects. In Linehammeri (a closed sub-marine base near the Norwegian border) they are doing breeding of Norwegian salmon. Unfortunately, the possibilities of sea farming on the coast of the Kola Peninsula are very limited due to the many many military zones. In the White Sea, on the other hand, I know they have had successful experiences on net breeding in summertime.

Any last words?

Yes, you should check out the fishing tourism that is up and coming. It is a million dollar industry in Alaska. It is a kind of adventure tourism where they set out fish for guaranteeing catch and even provide a very own chef for the tourists to learn how to cook their fish! We are doing a project on this in Kirkenes as an offer for the tourist in the ice hotel. It will be very nice.

INTEGRATE

integrated open sea water aquaculture, technology for sustainable culture of high productive areas

Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) is a practice in which the by-products (wastes) from one species are recycled to become inputs (fertilizers, food) for another.
Fed aquaculture (e.g. fish, shrimp) is combined with inorganic extractive (seaweed) and organic extractive (for example shellfish like mussels, or sea urchins) aquaculture to create balanced systems for environmental sustainability , economic stability -product diversification and risk reduction- and social acceptability -better management practices-.

Several integrated aquaculture projects have been started up the last few years, in different regions of the world (Japan, Canada, Chile, UK, Ireland, South Africa)

In Norway, Sintef, in association with NTNU are currently working on this sustainable way of sea farming.

http://www.sintef.no/Projectweb/INTEGRATE---/

Seafood from Finnmark to Russia

The Norwegian Seafood Company (Havbrukskompaniet) has joined a large project in Finnmark. The project is called “Seafood from Finnmark to Russia.” Their vision is to make the network of collaborating companies in Finnmark, leading in the market of fresh seafood export from Norway to Russia within 2011. The projects aim is an increased development of profitability through the export of a broad selection of seafood products via Troika Seafood AS in Kirkenes, to importers in Russia. The Russian importers serve the HORECA market and the retail market (supermarkets and special stores) in the biggest cities, together with processing companies.