Smelly Fish!

June 9, 2010
We survived our first night in the old fisherman’s cabin and joined our host for the day, Anders Paulsen, for a view into life in Lofoten. Although it is unseasonably cold, Lofoten is packed because this is the start of the busy summer season. The theme for today is fish, which is fitting since fishing is the main industry of the island from farming to packaging to tourism. Our first stop today is Nic. Haug AS, a storkfish factory. Here, storkfish are washed, dried, packaged and sorted. After the fish are dried, they are about 33 percent of what they weighed originally. The salted fish are exported to Italy, Portugal and Spain while the fresh fish are exported to Germany, England, Holland and France. Typically, the factory hangs the storkfish in February to dry and they remain on the drying racks through May. The quality of the fish is largely dependent on the weather conditions; need temperatures that are not too warm or freezing cold and a little wind. After the storkfish has been processed, a customer can buy it dried and soak it in water for four days to prepare it for consumption.

After a quick drive by past the local fish oil factory, our next stop in Lofoten was a visit to the Lofoten Maritime College/Vest Lofoten Upper Secondary School. Headmaster Søren Fredrik Voie introduced the college of 648 students and 160 employees. The school is located on the island of Vestvågøy, Lofoten, about 180 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Loften sees mild winters because of the Gulf Stream, allowing students training to be fishermen and seamen to take advantage of the ocean year round. One of the college’s greatest teaching tools is Poseidon, a computer-based simulator showcasing how to operate ships in different conditions. Poseidon, run under the direction of Captain Svein Arne, a mariner master with 366 months at sea under his belt, features 30 different ships in numerous ports across the world allowing students plan routes and then simulate the journey including rough weather conditions and docking.

After a delicious lunch, our next stop was to Aker Seafoods, a worldwide seafood distributor. At Aker, we were asked to dress in booties, a lab coat and hair net before entering the fishing plant. Over the course of the next 45 minutes, I learned more than I ever needed to know about the packaging of cod fish while stepping over fish guts and gagging from the stench of raw fish! It was interesting to see fish preparation from raw catch to final product on grocery store shelves. When a fishing shipment first arrives, the factory pulls out 10 percent of the total cargo to be measured for weight and length. The quality of the fish will determine the price to be paid to the fishermen. The fish is then cleaned and sent to the next machine via conveyer belt to be sliced as filets. The next step is the weighing where each worker is assigned to machine and required to weigh and cut the filets into 400 gram pieces. The workers’ pay correlates directly to the speed and accuracy of each cut, with starting pay at 140 NOK per hour to a max of 300 NOK per hour. If all the fresh fish is not needed, the rest is sent to be packaged as frozen food. Three pieces of the filet are packaged by hand into a plastic container and then placed in cardboard boxes. The boxes are sent into the freezer for about an hour to be frozen and then packaged into container freights. Aker Seafoods has about 90 total employees with 60 working on the floor. The workers generally start at 6:30 am and work until they have finished processing the fish or roughly 3:30 pm. The cleaning crew of five then come in and spends about seven hours wiping down and sanitizing all the equipment. After cleaning up, but still smelling like fish, we thanked our guides who sent us home with a package of frozen cod fish that Torgunn served for dinner later that evening.

Our last stop on the afternoon fish tour was a visit to LofiLabs, a fish farm. Our guide Espen showed us the process of harvesting fish which started with the parent fish that are kept in cages in the sea for most of the year. In February, the male and female fish are brought into a large tub where they spend two months mating while the fish farmers collect the eggs by spinning the water so all the eggs eventually land in the container. Those eggs are then taken into several individual tubs where fresh water is circulated throughout the day. Once a day, the y spin the water and the eggs that sink to the bottom are removed while the ones floating are still alive and continue to grow. There are nearly half a million eggs collected and transferred into the process. After three weeks, the eggs are now turning into larvae and the egg shells are collected while the fish are moved to the next step of large tubs. Here they are fed a specially cultivated microorganism until they are large enough to ingest dry feed. The larvae are monitored for another three weeks before they are big enough to take out to the sea. Here they are placed in large mesh bags to be hung underneath the jetty so as to allow the sea water to help them grow while they are fed dry feed. The fish are kept at this farm for about a year before they are sent to a sister company to be kept for another year until they are mature enough to be processed and sold. During the best year, 1.2 million fish were produced while the worst year produced only 200,000 fish. This year, Espen said the issue isn’t the quantity produced but the lack of buyers for the cod they do have.

After a fish filled afternoon, we arrived back to Kræmmervika Rorbuer for a quick dinner before getting dressed in our survival suits to head out on the boat to test our own fishing skills. Anders and Peter were doubling as our fishing instructors for the evening as we set sail around 8 pm. The speedboat took us into the middle of the water and surrounded by mountains and the midnight sun, the setting was absolutely picturesque. Our fishing adventure started early with Tim reeling in the first medium-sized cod fish and Peters bringing out his knife to release the fish and then slice the skin. For my first time on a fishing boat, I was horrified with the fish blood that splattered the boat and then watching the fish wiggling around as it bled out in the plastic container. Fishing was not for me, but I did capture the moment since this would probably be my only time aboard a fishing boat! Mason won the prize for the largest catch of the evening with a large cod fish. Other catches included haddak and sait (which was too small, so throw back into the water). The survival suit did a good job of keeping us warm but also retaining more of the fish smell. Never was I so excited to shower and so in need of laundry services!