A Voice For Iceland’s Vanishing Wild

Growing up in the midst of the punk rock movement in Iceland meant speaking truth to power was part of my life from an early age. It instilled in me a kind of rebellious spirit that I carried into my career as a journalist—prioritising stories that gave a voice to the voiceless. My work with the Icelandic Wildlife Fund is no different.

We protect Iceland’s wilderness by standing up for the places and species that can’t defend themselves against injustice. But how do you fight for a cause that’s almost invisible? In wild waters being destroyed from beneath their surface? You start with a story.

Let me take you back ten thousand years to an Iceland emerging from the deep freeze of the last Ice Age. As the colossal weight of the retreating glaciers lifted, the island rose from the sea, and its rugged coastline began to take shape—carved into a labyrinth of deep fjords, small creeks, and sweeping bays. Among the very first settlers of this land was the salmon.

A magnificent creature of two worlds, salmon is one of the few species on Earth with the grace to navigate both the rush of freshwater and the salt of the open sea. These wild Icelandic salmon populations are like no other, genetically distinct and forged by solitude in Iceland’s rivers.

But their future is now threatened by industrial-scale open net salmon farming, which has already wreaked havoc on wild salmon in every other country where the industry has dropped anchor. We want the open net pens out before it is too late.

Thankfully, the world is beginning to realise that open net salmon farming is a fundamentally terrible way to produce food. These farming sites release enormous amounts of untreated waste and toxins into their immediate surroundings, with devastating impacts on the natural ecosystems.
Beyond its brutal disregard for the environment, the industry is built on immense suffering. The massive scale of the pens keep thousands of fish in cramped conditions, inflicting parasites, disease, and catastrophic mortality rates on the farmed animals.
Salmon used to inhabit countless rivers on both sides of the Atlantic. The Rhine was once considered the best salmon river in the world, with an annual run of about one million wild fish. However, no salmon has been caught in the Rhine for nearly a century. The same tragic tale applies to the Thames, the Seine, the Hudson in New York, and hundreds more Atlantic river systems. Overfishing, pollution, and now open net salmon farming have wiped out approximately 99 percent of the world’s wild Atlantic salmon.

Iceland’s wild salmon are iconic, and not only form part of our identity, but support thousands of people across the country who guide, host, or benefit from the wider economic impacts of responsible fishing tourism. In fact, the fly fishing community in Iceland—and across the world—was among the first to highlight the dramatic drop in salmon numbers witnessed in rivers.

The fish farming industry would have you believe that its presence also supports jobs, but in reality, they offer roughly 330 full-time positions—0.15% of Iceland’s labour market. To put that number into context, the tourism industry provides around 30,000 jobs. Employment is a key issue in many rural communities, but the industry is trading off fear. In many cases, the negative impacts of fish farming can jeopardise the long-term economic resilience of small towns due to pollution of fjords and the reduced wild fish populations. The multinationals that own the open net pens have already caused vast environmental damage in their home of Norway, and are now expanding to new extractive opportunities without any accountability for the damage they cause to Iceland.

The industry’s extractive approach extends beyond employment too, with cruelty literally written into the business model. On average, four out of every ten farmed salmon placed in Icelandic pens die before they can be harvested. In 2025 alone, 5.3 million farmed salmon died in pens around Iceland—that’s over 100 times greater than the total number of wild Icelandic salmon.

Once established in our pristine fjords, the open net pens release enormous amounts of untreated waste and toxins with devastating impacts on natural ecosystems. Then, when farmed salmon escape (which they do often and in huge numbers), they interbreed with wild stocks, causing genetic mixing that obliterates 10,000 years of evolutionary adaptation. This process drastically reduces the ability of wild salmon populations to survive in their natural environment.

And then there’s the food needed to grow the farmed salmon. Their feed is primarily made from fishmeal and soybeans cultivated across vast stretches of land, mainly in areas of South America cleared within the Amazon rainforest. This extensive land use, combined with long transport routes, contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. It also takes three to four kilograms of wild fish to produce just one kilogram of farmed salmon. Of the wild fish used in this feed, 90 percent could have been used directly for human consumption. Salmon farming is not a food production system—it is a food reduction system.

The companies operating this system are majority-owned by MOWI and SalMar: massive foreign corporations listed on the Norwegian stock exchange. These industrial giants run aggressive, expensive, and sophisticated lobbying campaigns here in Iceland, and have infiltrated many layers of regulation and government to their corrupt advantage.

But opinion polls show that 65% of Icelanders oppose open net salmon farming, and in 2024, a campaign proposing a ban resulted in the country’s biggest ever petition. Regular protests, events, and grassroots lobbying further demonstrate the public’s opinion. Plus, only 14% of the country say they support it. Iceland could set a precedent for the rest of Europe if the government just listened to the will of its people and banned this harmful practice forever.

Wild salmon can’t speak out for itself. And the industry is careful to keep the devastation underwater, away from the eyes of regulators and government officials. It’s why it’s so important to use our voices now, and tell the story before it’s too late.

Speak up for Iceland—its communities and wild nature. Send an email to Iceland’s government and call for new legislation to bring an end to open net salmon farming. Your voice has already made a difference. Help Icelandic communities show their government that the world is watching at this critical time for nature.

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