Orri Vigfusson Recorded November 2012

Transcription

1 Orri Vigfusson Recorded November 2012 How one man s vision and passion are saving one great fish SILVER DONALD Orri Vigfusson grew up in a herring fishing family on the north coast of Iceland. The collapse of the herring stocks knocked out the underpinnings of the whole community, and Orri's family had to move away. He went on to become a highly successful businessman, with interests in distilling, banking, and tourism. But when the salmon seemed to be going the same way as the herring, Orri's memories of the herring collapse drove him into action. He concluded that commercial salmon fishing should be ended, not just in Iceland or in the great salmon feeding grounds off the west coast of Greenland, but everywhere in the North Atlantic Basin. And how? Mainly, by buying up the fishing licenses of netsmen 1

2 throughout western Europe and eastern North America, retiring the licenses and finding other occupations for the fisherman to pursue. He built alliances, created the North Atlantic Salmon Fund, raised money and pressured governments. Seventeen years later, he's eighty-five percent of the way to his goal. One guy... setting out to save a great fish. If Orri Vigfusson can do that, what can I do? What can you do? ORRI VIGFUSSON (1:19): My ambition is to cover, to make commercial agreements in the feeding grounds, in the migration of the salmon, so they can travel, migrate, throughout the North Atlantic range freely and always have a chance to come back to their home native river. Essentially to end net fishing in the North Atlantic? VIGFUSSON: Yes, the end of net fishing and long-lining. There is a lot of long-lining for some taking place in the Northeast Atlantic. The Faroese operated these long-lines, they were started by Danish fisheries, Danish fisherman, from the island of Bornholm in the Baltic. They had the expertise, knew how to do it, and long-lining is a very good way in the fishery to preserve the quality of the fish, you see. I live in Iceland because that is where I can have fresh fish to eat every day of the week. And, we like it. We don't buy fish that is caught in a net because that can be suffocating the fish and so-on. We buy fish that has been caught by long-lining. Then, it preserves the quality of the fish. Net-fishing, they suffocate, and also the blood of the fish may be staining the flesh of the fish you see, so, we think it is not good enough quality, so. [Chuckles] That's a very demanding standard. How did this come about? How did it come about that you decided one guy you decided that, essentially, commercial fishing of salmon in the North Atlantic should end. How did you come to that? VIGFUSSON (3:17): Well, I come from a herring family in the northern part of Iceland, just by the Arctic Circle. In the fifties and the sixties we saw the overfishing of the herring and soon, by 1967, there was no herring left. So, we really destroyed the diversity of the stocks and suddenly there was no more herring. So, I have that in my blood. My family, we had to move away, and there was no more income to get from the herring stocks. So, this is my background, so I know a lot about the fishery. In Iceland, we export fish for about two billion dollars a year. There are three hundred thousand of us. So we know a great deal about fisheries management. We get it in the morning newspapers, we get it in the breakfast news and the television news. Every two or three hours we are reminded in the news, some elements on fisheries management and quality of the fish, and so-on. 2

3 We have come a long way in organizing our fisheries in a way that it is managed through commercial agreements. I think fisheries everywhere should be managed by commercial agreements. I do not believe in government resolutions of this and that because every nation interprets that in a different way, every little village interprets that in a different way. But if you have commercial agreements, people usually stick to agreements, and that is what encouraged me to make commercial agreements for the fisherman. People respect commercial agreements because if you violate the agreement, somebody doesn't get paid, you see, because you only get pay provided that the agreement is fulfilled. All the fisheries in Iceland, my home country, is managed by quotas, very strict quotas. Every year, based on scientific assessment, every little boat or big boat, is allocated a quota: so many tonnes of cod, so many tonnes of halibut, so many tonnes or herring and so on. And then that quota is fished that's it. No more fishing, you have to stop. What happens is then we start trading in these quotas: I buy your halibut quota, I sell my cod quota, and we specialize, and I fish my quota of that particular species when I know I have a very good market. If the market is very high in September in Japan, that is when I cast my fish, you see. So we have developed a so-called Individual Transferable Quotas, so the value of our fisheries is very, very, very high. For instance, it's probably thirty percent more value of fish caught in Iceland than in the neighbouring country, Norway, which has a different system. And the European Union still has a different system. They have so-called effort limitations that you can only fish so many days a year. So the fisherman only go out when there's best fishing and they usually over-fish. Fisheries management should be based on commercial agreements. It's the only way that works. This gave me the impetus to say to the Greenlanders, to the people in Wales, on Faroe Islands, I will sit down with you and I fully, fully respect and recognize your right to the fishery. You have been doing this for centuries, you have been doing it it's an inheritable right. All I want to do is to sit down with you and to try to figure out what I can do to make your income, make your lifestyle better, so you get more money for whatever you're doing. So, if you were catching salmon and getting so much value out of it, I will try to find you something else, like lumpfish, like snow crab, like shrimp or whatever. And I will make you improve your income. This is what I do. If I can't help you do that, that's fine. If at the end of our negotiations, you are not happy, you walk away. Nobody is hurt. I would like to buy in the long term or in the short term your salmon fishing rights. So, about five thousand two hundred fishermen, all over the North Atlantic now have signed up. And this represents about eighty-five percent of all the fish that used to be caught and I think you will find that virtually every single one of them, is now happy. They have a better income, they have a better lifestyle, and it works. Now, let me make sure I understand this because this is a really remarkable piece of work, based on some remarkable insights. So, I have a right to fish salmon and you want to acquire that, but at the same time you're also finding me other fish to catch, other markets to satisfy, but are you paying me for the salmon I am not catching, also? Year after year? VIGFUSSON (9:33): You can say that. I am paying you to cease harvesting salmon, but I am offering you a compensation either straight-up cash or more importantly I will help you use that cash to redirect your boat in such a way that you get new equipment, you get new technology, new long-lining, and so on, and you would 3

4 use that to catch other sustainable species. So, I am better off because I get more salmon to go up the rivers for the sport fisherman and rural communities to have more income from the sport fishing, but you get more income from the shrimp or the lumpfish or whatever. And it could be any combination of that, it could be I give you some cash and also I equip you for snow crab, that sort of thing? Or just whatever works for the individual fisherman? VIGFUSSON (10:35): Yeah. One lady in Iceland who had a right to net, she said, But Orri, I don't want any of that, my interest is in cows. Okay, I said, What do you want to do with the cows? She said, Maybe I can make cheese and open up a cheese shop? I said, Okay. Let's help you open up a cheese shop. And she's now been fifteen years running a cheese shop, and doing very well. Plus she has a compensation package, some of it stashed away and that gives her an annual income. It's a win-win situation you see. Yeah, very individual. So whatever it takes to get a fisherman to stop netting salmon, or long-lining salmon, that's what you'll do. VIGFUSSON (11:28): Some of them are into sport fishing, a few of them, and they become fishing guides, use their boats for taking people out sport fishing, deep sea fishing, or whatever, and so on. I'm different. Most other organizations will simply want to ban the commercial fishing, I don't ban. I want to negotiate so everybody gets a fair deal, you see. And that really is sustainable over the long term. Now, this takes an enormous amount of money, doesn't it? VIGFUSSON (12:08): It does take a lot of money, yup. Where does that come from? 4

5 VIGFUSSON: Ahh! [Laughter] It's a good question. I gather you're a successful businessman, but not that successful. [Chuckles] VIGFUSSON (12:17): No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no... Of course, I paid for everything in the beginning, but then it grew out of hand. But I have learned how to raise money. I am still unprofessional and everybody thinks I am doing it the wrong way, but somehow I have always managed to raise enough. I do it by talking to the river owners, often they come to a project for a few years to raise enough pot. I host dinners around the world, auctions and so on, receptions. I have film showings whatever it takes. But of course, mostly I meet with wealthy individuals who are interested in the salmon and the stocks and the environment and I work with them and they make donations and I've raised fifty, sixty, seventy million dollars this way. Just to maintain the agreements I have to raise about five or ten thousand dollars every day of the year! [Chuckles] I am getting older, and it's getting more difficult, you know. But I have become more and more successful at identifying the people who would like to do this. Do you get assistance from governments at all? VIGFUSSON (13:53): Very little. I did a partnership with the UK government when we bought out the driftnets in the North Sea, that was very helpful. I mean the Canadian government, they did it themselves. Remember they bought out they used commercial agreements to buy out the licenses in Newfoundland and Labrador. And we didn't have to raise any money for that. And in Ireland, I lobbied in Ireland for seventeen years for the closure of the Irish driftnets. In the end, the Irish government paid for it themselves with a lot of grants from the European Union. But I had lobbied the French government you see the Irish driftnets were taking not just Irish salmon, they were taking salmon returning home to France and Germany and south of England, Wales and Spain. The French government helped lobby in Ireland, and I think in the end, the Irish, they didn't want to upset the French anymore because every year the French have to approve of the huge European grants going to Ireland. At the moment, I am trying to lobby the Russian government because what is left of the mixed-stock fishery, of the netting, mostly a great deal of that is now taking place in the northern part of Norway, the areas called Tromsø and Finnmark. Before Russian salmon come home to their rivers in the Kola, they crawl along the Norwegian coast and there are still a lot of coastal nets there. So I am doing the same as we did in Ireland. I am now lobbying the Russian government and we've been quite successful because only last month we managed to get the Russian Security Council to take up this matter and they will be charging the Norwegian government for violating the United Nation's Law of The Sea, which in essence, the spirit of article 66, the spirit means that if one nation is taking salmon from another nation, the nation of origin can demand a stop to that particular fishery. Sixty to seventy percent of salmon caught in the spring by Norwegian nets are 5

6 salmon that are native to Russian rivers. These are the very, very, very big salmon, the big spawners that in May and June are returning home. The future foundation, wellbeing of the Russian salmon means that they have to get these salmon back to spawn. Are those the salmon that are known as crocodiles, they're so big? They are like six-year salmon that have been out at sea for six years, and have become...? VIGFUSSON (17:16): Yeah, well normally, the Atlantic salmon, they are two, three, four years, up to five, six years in the rivers. You know, being a fry and a parr and a smolt, and then they go out. And they usually, most of them, stay in the sea for one, two, three years, up to four or five years the very, very big salmon. The biggest salmon today are salmon coming into the rivers of northern Norway and into the northern rivers of Canada. The famous Kharlovca River, the Rynda, the Yokanga and East Litza these are the rivers in the north and northeast of the Kola Peninsula. It's very, very, very big stocks. Yes, it's fascinating because in eastern Canada there are some stocks that just go for one year and they just stay in close to the Gulf of Maine and then there are the other ones that go for much longer, to Greenland and come back. You think of them as a single species but there are all kinds of variety within the species. VIGFUSSON (18:24): Yeah, I know, and there are so many different sub-populations of salmon and that makes it very, very complicated, you see. That is why we differ from scientists, scientists want to study if you have to study this all, you study it to death. There is no limit to what you can break up a biological detail. It can be broken up and studied forever, you see. But at some point we have to say... my goal is to get more salmon back into the rivers, have the life cycle of the salmon working fully now because we need more salmon in the rivers tomorrow. Because that creates more biology, more abundance of the stock, and it creates more income from the local communities and from that extra income you can do then more science, if you like. But science must not interfere and slow us down. And that is what they have sadly been doing for so many years, you see. We don't quite know enough yet and so if you postpone the action... VIGFUSSON (19:38): No, but we know... why don't we do now what has to be done? We know that the mixed-stock fishery doesn't work, it's against common sense, it's against the wellbeing of the stocks. 6

7 Now, explain to me a mixed-stock fishery, what is that? VIGFUSSON (19:56): Mixed-stock fishery is where a fishery in the ocean it can be a net, it can be a long-lining operation or trap where the net is taking salmon from two, three, four or more rivers because the net cannot control and only take salmon from healthy rivers, sustainable rivers. The net will take everything. It may take a salmon from a very unhealthy river where the biological level is far below any safe levels. That is why, back in 1994 in Oslo, all the salmon aces got together and they decided that we have to stop all mixed-stock fishery because we cannot control the fishery. And that's where you've been particularly concerned? VIGFUSSON (20:50): Yes. Yeah. Sadly, the Irish are now trying to find a way of reopening some of their fisheries by saying, There can be some mixed-stock fisheries that can operate, and that is making the Greenlanders and the Faroers, the high seas quota holders, mad because they say, Why should we stop fishing for salmon when the salmon we save, when it returns to their home rivers, are taken on the coastlines in nets in Ireland, in Norway and in Scotland. It doesn't make sense. You can always make up scientific formulas for more details and so on. So the danger at the moment is that this fight is going on. The Greenlanders are saying, No. We will go back to commercial fishery, because the salmon we save is slaughtered by others. For instance, the Faroese, they calculated how many salmon they had saved in the last ten years and they came back that they had saved about one million salmon, allowing them safe return back to the rivers. But at the same time, Scotland alone caught about nine hundred and thirty thousand salmon, so about ninety-five of every salmon saved by the Faroes were caught in the Scottish nets, you see. And that is why the [North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organization] Treaty will not work. The NASCO Treaty sets quotas only for two countries: only for the high seas fisherman of the Faroes and Greenland. But their own netsmen, at home, they can slaughter them all, and they will never reach the spawning grounds. You can't have an international treaty saying one rule for you and another rule for me. It would never work in the long term. So, who's left, if you've got about eighty-five percent of the commercial fishing essentially retired, who is the other fifteen percent? VIGFUSSON (23:16): Mostly in Norway, also in Scotland, coastal nets in various places in Scotland, mostly on the north east 7

8 coast in Scotland on the Montrose Basin, in the north, very, very tip of the northern part of Scotland. And also, in Ireland, in the so-called Fall District. This is a district where North and South Ireland meet and there they have operated a mixed-stock fishery. It has now been banned for four years because of pressure our friends in Ireland were able to get through the European Union. There was a four-year moratorium on this and before that is up we are now raising money to raise the funds to try to buy them out before they reopen the fishery. So, it's Northern Ireland at the Fall District, it s Scotland but mostly it s Norway. It sounds as though the Scots and the Norwegians, from what I am reading between the lines, are really quite determined to keep on doing this. Is that true? VIGFUSSON (24:32): Yes, they are at the moment. Well, the Norwegian government have accepted that this is in violation where they are taking salmon from another nation, i.e., Russia but they are saying there is a provision in the United Nation s Law of the Sea, which provides a delaying process. And the Norwegians have used that and they claim economic dislocation of their poor fisherman, i.e., We are such a poor nation in Norway, allow us to... [Chuckles] Of course, Norway is the richest nation on earth, you see. I was going to say, there was a time when that was true, it was a poor nation, but not in our time. VIGFUSSON (25:21): Not any more, no, no. They are the richest nation. And they're also the originators of net pen aquaculture. Tell me your views on that because I gather that that can be seen as a real threat to wild salmon, too. VIGFUSSON (25:37): My fund, the North Atlantic Salmon Fund, we are primarily engaged our focus is the mixed-stock fishery, the netting, providing safety in the sea for the migration routes. We also engage in other areas like fighting dams and pulling down dams. We've been quite successful in some countries like that. Thirdly, we are trying to address the aquaculture in a way to promote sustainability into aquaculture. Most of the aquaculture today is unsustainable because of the problems created by pollution, by parasites, and so on, and the long term problem of course is probably the escapees creating a genetic mix, and so on, which could be bad. But that is not our focus. There are other conservation partners we have who are focusing on that. In Norway, the North Atlantic Salmon Fund in Norway, we raise money to fund a campaign in Norway for the sustainability of the aquaculture industry. Of course, what we 8

9 would like to do is to see all aquaculture stopped in the sea and moved onto land because on land it can be controlled but in the sea, it can never be controlled. There will always be escapees, parasites, like the sea lice. The sea lice problem in Norway is principally responsible for the fact that one hundred and ten salmon rivers in Norway are now closed because they are in such poor shape. They've lost that many salmon in those rivers. VIGFUSSON (27:41): One more thing: we also lobby for sustainability and better management of the industrial fisheries in the sea fisheries for herring, for krill, for sandeel, for capelin to keep that down. But that is also another very complicated subject because the data is so incomplete in order to make proper arguments. Because a vessel may be registered in Ireland, the ownership may be in Norway, and they land the catches in Scotland, so it's very, very difficult to do this. But that is what we have lobbied for and in some areas we've been able to lobby for the reduction on the sandeel fishery in the North Sea and also the capelin fishery around Iceland and so on. There is a new formula in Iceland that unless the stocks are calculated in excess of four hundred thousand tons, no capelin quota will be issued. But it is the mixed-stock fishery that is my campaign. Yeah, that's the core of it all, but these other things are obviously VIGFUSSON (29:07): We tried to help in that area. All the other things are to help return salmon stocks to their historic abundance but this is what we have embraced. This is what we try to do. This is what we have been very, very successful in doing and eventually we need to create a capital fund that pays for this in the future. Because the high seas fisherman, they cannot sell it out in perpetuity. You guys in this country, you can't just sell out your oil rights and gas rights in the future, you know. So, we have to come to agreements and we have to work with these people in Greenland and the Faroe Islands and so on, and every year to help the fisherman, help the people who have the historic rights to the fishery. Well, yes, and it's clearly not sustainable to have to be raising five or ten thousand dollars a day in perpetuity. [Laughter] VIGFUSSON (30:11): That is why I need rich people to help me! 9

10 [Chuckles] Yes, and that is where you need your capital funds, that will produce that kind of... VIGFUSSON (30:21): But this has worked well for close to fifteen, twenty years and we are now reassessing where we stand and so on, and of course I am getting older. I can't do it for many more years. Are you surprised at the success you've had? VIGFUSSON (30:38): Well, in the beginning I thought this would only take two or three years, you know, that everybody would see it my way. [Laughs] But then I slowly realized that nobody saw it my way! Okay... but, I was able to convince a lot of people. I am actually now happy with the success and I am happy that this philosophy is gaining ground. We have been asked to take a look at the mackerel issue, the tuna fishing and so on. Because everybody is now saying, Why don't we do it for more species? That was a question I wanted to ask you: is this a model that can be used and maybe not even just in fisheries? Is it a model that might be used in other areas? Forestry, for example, or something like that. VIGFUSSON (31:27): I am sure it's already used in forestry and of course it is used in pollution quotas and so on, that has started. We have started giving advice to others, you know. But there have to be other organizations that do that, my organization is simply for the salmon. Well, it's a spectacular story. VIGFUSSON (32:01): And this is volunteers only. Nobody in my organization, except one secretary, gets paid. Everybody has to this on his own freewill and doesn't get paid. How many people are involved? 10

11 VIGFUSSON (32:17): Oh, I have hundreds of people involved. It's about maybe fifty to a hundred people in all the countries and I work in fourteen countries altogether. That's a trick too, to be able to operate in fourteen countries successfully and very different countries, too. Very different attitudes. VIGFUSSON (32:45): This year, after sixty years, we had the first two salmon returning to the North Sea, up the River Rhine, all the way in to Switzerland. After sixty years two salmon came back to spawn! And also this year, seven salmon came back to spawn in the Czech Republic of all places, up the Elbe [River] system in Germany and over the border and into the Czech Republic. How are they coming there? VIGFUSSON (33:18): Well, they're stocking. People have stocked those rivers and they're now getting returns. So these wouldn't be the original salmon that would have been there before all the industrial pollution and the dams and so forth? VIGFUSSON (33:31): No, no. We have found a very, very good strain of stock in the rivers of Denmark. They seem to be of similar genetic integrity that used to be and they are mostly using that in Europe now. And more and more now our people are using the Peter Gray method of stocking. This is a method that is used in stocking very successful. The biggest stocking success story in the world is the Peter Gray in the River Tyne that empties through into the North Sea in the north east of England, goes through Newcastle. That river was almost virtually dead forty years ago. But Peter Gray's stocking method was employed there and last year we had sixty thousand salmon coming back through the fish counter there and five thousand six hundred salmon were caught on a rod and line. We are now using this same methodology up in Maine. I asked them in Maine, Look, give me a river in North America, I want to try this stocking method, and they said the river Maine. I told them, The worst river you can think of, I just want a river. We started that one year ago and we are now about to release sixty-five thousand the most beautiful healthy looking parr you ever saw in North America. The same good quality as, virtually, as the wild parr. Peter Gray, I have sent him over five times to monitor and set up 11

12 all the technology up on the East Machias River and we are not one hundred percent sure if this will work but we think this is the best thing that can happen there. The river is virtually dead of salmon and when you have a dead river the only thing you can do is stock it. Of course, we try everything else first, we use the natural stock of the river, that is the thing. But when you have a dead river, or you have a river that is so low in stocks that diversity cannot work, you have to restock. We would like to make this an example for the next five or ten years and for all the rivers to copy, if it works, and we are pretty confident that it may work. What is Peter Gray's system? What is different about his way of doing it? VIGFUSSON (36:33): From egg to parr, he raises them very carefully in a new way, trying to utilize the natural water. The hatchery is built on the river so we have the same water coming through with the same insets coming through with the water and so on, and he does it in a way that is as natural as possible. You see, over ninety percent of eggs or fry or what are the result from eggs, die in year one. That is what he is cutting out, this mortality during the first year. Then he releases the parr, five or six centimetres, into the river about this time of the year, in late October or November, when the water temperature in the river goes down to five degrees Celsius, or below five degrees, because then all the parr, they stop feeding. And when they are in the rivers there is no competition with wildlife in the rivers. They then are conditioned in this cold environment to live together until next spring or next summer when the temperature comes up and they start feeding again. This is his methodology. He's written a book about this and you should see that book. I will have it sent to you. Thank you very much. VIGFUSSON (38:19): A lot of biologists now, who have been working on this, they are now all looking at him and they all like what they see. They are all confident that is certainly, probably the best way to proceed. It's spectacular to think that we've got to the point where there are even a few salmon going back up Rhine and back up the Elbe. Those are incredibly polluted rivers. But what you tell me about the Tyne is truly astonishing. VIGFUSSON (38:57) My only worry with the East Machias is global warming and it is getting quite warm up there. The salmon like a cold environment and the river East Machias, I think it's almost at the same level as 12

13 Madrid in Spain, you see. I fear for the heat. What's going on in Spain? We did have salmon rivers in Spain. Are they still productive at all? VIGFUSSON (39:32) About three or four hundred years ago, there was a huge amount of salmon coming to the rivers of Spain and they were all situated in the northern part of Spain, flowing north into the Bay of Biscay the River Esva, the River Navia, the River Sella the many beautiful rivers up there. They were all virtually extinct and every year now they catch about five hundred up to three thousand salmon a year. They are big supporters of NASF because their salmon, they know it comes to Greenland and Iceland and they need protection there. Sadly, we have introduced a lot of catch and release, fly only and so on. Sadly we had a governor of Asturias, president of Asturias, who banned all this. [Chuckles] Just kill everything and so on. He's now been voted out of the presidency so we are slowly coming back into better methodology and regulation. That's what's happening there. We have been working with a lot of the people in the Pyrenees Atlantic region that runs also into the Bay of Biscay. We have leased the netting rights in June and July and this year we have started buying some of them out forever. The fisherman there that used commercial investment, they have been fishing for salmon but also most of their income has come from the baby eel fishery. Very, very, very valuable fish. There is more and more production now of [salmon] parr and juveniles in the rivers in the Pyrenees Atlantic. We have been working with the French government a lot over the last ten years in the Pyrenees Atlantic region, but also in Normandy, where you have rivers called the Sélune and the Sée and it is there that the French government agreed to pull down two huge dams to allow the salmon free access back up the rivers, and so on. This is a terrifically encouraging story. I mean, it's a hard-won battle, it's taken an enormous amount of time and effort and money and so forth, but it actually works. VIGFUSSON (42:21): I think so. Now, one of the things that you've also said and that I'd like you to tell us a little bit about is that you see the salmon as a major economic resource for the rural communities that they touch on. Tell me how that works? 13

14 VIGFUSSON (42:36): Every year, everywhere, people are fighting to create more jobs in rural areas. The jobs of course, always come from big cities and so on. What can we do for the rural areas? And salmon can be very valid in that respect if it is in abundance because we get a lot of sports fisherman coming to fish the premium rivers. This is what the governor of Mormask said last month when I met her and she agreed to help to get this matter to the Russian Security Council. It means a lot for the people who live in the Mormask area. I think it's about the same size and same number of rivers and same catches in Russia as in Iceland. In Iceland, we have maybe eighty or ninety salmon rivers, we catch about fifty thousand salmon a year, sixty thousand salmon a year and it creates jobs for about eleven, twelve hundred people. It's a lot of income. The economic value of the industry is about a hundred and fifty million dollars. It's a lot of money for fishing. So if you catch fifty thousand salmon, are these fifty thousand salmon catch and release by sports fisherman or are these fifty thousand salmon that are caught by the shore and processed? VIGFUSSON (44:11): No, in Iceland there is no commercial fishery. We bought up the last remaining nets about ten, fifteen years ago. It takes about forty, fifty salmon to create one job. Really? VIGFUSSON (44:26): Yeah! Sure. It's so valuable. Why is it so valuable, where does the money come from? VIGFUSSON (44:34): Because the people come and they pay money to come. It's an angling tourist industry. And it's very expensive in Iceland, too, right? 14

15 VIGFUSSON (44:46): Yeah, it's too expensive. Of course, our job is to get more and more salmon coming back to bring the prices down so more of us can afford to. So the fact that it is so expensive reflects the scarcity of salmon. VIGFUSSON (45:02): Absolutely, yes. What does it cost? If I want to go fishing salmon in Iceland I am not a salmon fisherman but if I were and I wanted go fish in Iceland, what would it cost me? VIGFUSSON (45:14): I think the basic price starts at about five hundred dollars a day, and a thousand, twelve hundred dollars are for normal, for better rivers. And for the very, very premium rivers, it costs up to about three, four thousand dollars a day. A day? VIGFUSSON: Yes. Now where does that money go? Who gets that money? VIGFUSSON: The people who own the rivers. Okay. So the rivers themselves are actually owned? 15

16 VIGFUSSON (45:54): In Iceland, Norway and Scotland, we have a private ownership of the salmon resource nothing to do with government. It belongs to the land-owners, to the land adjoining the rivers. That is why everything we do in Iceland is all done by the private sector. The government hardly does anything. After all, it's a private industry and it is a private resource, they get all the income but they have to pay all the expenses. It is very different from the North American system: the property of the common. Well, in Nova Scotia, where we are from, anybody can fish salmon if there is salmon there to be fished. There is no restrictions. But I think in New Brunswick, I think it's more your style, I think in the Miramichi for example, has private salmon angling rights up and down the river. So maybe a different story. You've said you're a believer in green capitalism and I guess we've been talking about that. But, tell me a little more about green capitalism because I think there are an awful lot of people who are green who think that capitalism is the problem. VIGFUSSON (47:18): Yes, well my fund is really a green capitalism, you know. We would like to restore salmon stocks. But we do it by brokering agreements between the stakeholders. So one stakeholder, he gets out of business and gets a new business away from the salmon, something sustainable but the salmon for him was unsustainable. So that is how we buy and sell. [Laughs] That is in essence what we are doing, brokering deals between one group of stakeholders and another group of stakeholders. The other one I wanted to ask you about too was the Individual Transferable Quota because I think we had that in Canada with the cod fish and nevertheless, we lost the cod fish. VIGFUSSON (48:19): Are you sure? I think we did, I think there was, after the Kirby Commission, I think that's the way the fishery was organized and you would think that if I have a quota like that, it's valuable, I would be very interested in preserving the stock because that preserves the value of the quota. It seems as though we had that, and nevertheless lost on the cod fish, and I never quite understood how that worked. VIGFUSSON (48:44): I don't know about the system in Canada, I must admit. I don't think it was freely transferable. 16

17 Perhaps not. See, I guess one of the things that I am saying to myself, How is it that Orri in Iceland is doing all this wonderful work, and partly I wonder if it's the long memory of a little European country that's been there dealing with these resources for thousands of years. And I think the short term and this may be the issue of green capitalism too is that capitalism these days seem to be a very short term thing: catch it, make the next quarterly report, drive the stock price up, sell it and get out. There's none of this thought about the long distance future. But that may be built into the genes of a country like Iceland. There's not that much there to be drawing on and you figured out how to do it. [Laughs] VIGFUSSON (49:45): [Laughter] Well, the story goes that Iceland, who came from Russia, Norway one Norwegian king was taking over all the kings and after he was successful he owed so much money that he had to pay for it. His advisers told him to send out some tax bills so he sent out the tax bills and everybody who could read and write left the country of course because they didn't want to pay the tax. There is a lot of capitalist element in the Icelandic way of thinking, yes. We are a very small country but we have to embrace capitalism just as much as socialism, you see. There are a lot of entrepreneurs. We had the biggest crash of any country in the world but we will probably be the first way up again, you know? But there again, you didn't do it the way everybody else did, either. [Laughs] You took quite a different path, which obviously works. One final question is, you have among your supporters the Prince of Wales. VIGFUSSON: Yes, yes. How did you get the Prince of Wales aboard? VIGFUSSON (51:09): I had just started and I had contacted a friend who used to fish in Iceland a lot. His name is Lord Tryon, who used to be a very good friend of the Prince of Wales. He told me that he would support me after I started and then, suddenly, I had a call from him saying that the Prince of Wales wanted to meet with me because ten years earlier, the Prince of Wales had been writing letters to the British government, to Harold Wilson, the Prime Minster at the time, asking him to address the netting of salmon in Greenland. So when he heard about my methodology he was delighted that somebody was finally addressing this, you see. So Lord Tryon said, Next time you come to London, I will organize a meeting, and I met him, and he's been a great supporter all the time. Every year he does something for me, maybe hosts a reception or a dinner or he will write a foreword to a book or something. He's 17

18 very, very supportive. He used to fish in Iceland of course, quite a lot. He still fishes in Scotland every year, he fishes on the River Dee and Balmoral Beach. He's very keen. That's fascinating. He saw this problem on his own, years before... VIGFUSSON (52:51): Yes, before any body else, yes! He's very clever and of course very green. My other big supporter is, of course, Paul Volcker. Paul? VIGFUSSON (53:06): Paul Volcker with the Federal Reserve? Yes, yes, yes, yes VIGFUSSON: The most famous banker ever. Now how did he come into the picture? VIGFUSSON (53:16): He heard about the green capitalism. He likes using money in a good way, you see. He's a guy who wants to stop the bank from using all the money for speculation. He says, When an old lady puts her money in the bank, that money should be safe! Banks shouldn't speculate and say to the lady, 'I'm sorry, we lost it all'. I just had breakfast with him. Every time I come to New York I have a long meeting with him. He comes to fish with us in Iceland too. Oh, that's nice. 18

19 VIGFUSSON (53:53): Yeah, he's a very, very good supporter of the salmon cause. Well, allies like that have got to be pretty critical to the success of the whole thing. VIGFUSSON (54:05): Oh, I've had a lot of the Bass family in Texas, you know. President Bush, he used to fish with us in Iceland; Jack Nicklaus, the famous golfer, lots of nice people around the world. But sadly, I get all this credit you see, but there are a lot more people who do a great deal of the work. But you do still have a salmon fishing business of your own, is that right? VIGFUSSON (54:41): I am the chairman of four fishing clubs and we operate fisheries, you see. Two of the clubs is just for social clubs but two of them are business operations and we make money from it. That's how it should be done, you see. [Laughter] Everything should be done for profit because otherwise the operation will die. In a way, that's a test of sustainability and social enterprise. VIGFUSSON: Absolutely, yes, yes. That's one of the things that we've had now I diverge here a little bit we've just done a bunch of work on salmon aquaculture, as I think you know, and we'll be talking about that tomorrow. But one of the things that the aquaculturists say is you can't grow Atlantic salmon in closed containment on the land because it isn't profitable. VIGFUSSON (55:37): Well, that has been, I think, proven. I mean, this new methodology they're using in Virginia, I have great 19

20 faith in that. They say that they can produce salmon, profitably, at about the same price per kilo as they do in Norway. Let's hope they are right because that could change the whole story of the aquaculture industry because instead of producing up in the north, in Canada, Iceland, and Norway and so on, they would be producing it in New York, they would be producing it just outside Paris, where the market is, you see. The other methodology would be put out of business if this is a long-term profitability. So your vision, in that case, would be that what the government and companies are saying in places like Nova Scotia is, This is rural development, this produces jobs, this produces profits, it keeps the economy rolling around, but your answer to that would be, that could very well go to New York or Paris and then if what you had then is wild salmon, you'd be better off. Is that right? VIGFUSSON (56:54): Yeah, and I think what we can do we are now in two places in Iceland. We are trying to develop it in such a way that the fishing lodges are used for fisherman in the summer but for the skiing industry in the winter. They use the same facilities, and so on. I think we will see a lot of that in the future. People come skiing and staying in the fishing lodges. It makes a lot of sense. VIGFUSSION (57:23): It makes beautiful sense, you see. [Laughs] Orri Vigfusson, one of the great conservationists and one of the great examples of our time. If you were inspired by Orri's defence of the salmon, you may want to hear more about Paul Watson's defence of the whales or Diana Beresford-Kroeger's defence of the forests or Jane Goodall's dedication to the chimpanzees. You'll find them all on The Green Interview site. For The Green Interview, I m Silver Donald Cameron. Thanks for joining us. 20