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PrologueMankind conquers the world and sets its sights on the fish
Why did we domesticate fish? Or rather, why didn’t we do it sooner? Evolution gave us toes to stand with, bodies to walk upright with, fingers to grip and create with, teeth to eat with. We were able to hunt across long distances, tracking our prey until it collapsed and lay trembling before us.
We mastered fire, and that fire allowed us to cook, stay warm, and keep predators at bay. We spent less time chewing and more time thinking. Fat and nutrition from meat allowed us, high on energy, to take a new leap. Our bodies changed, our brains grew larger. More capacity for thought enabled us to plan. We learned to group together and work in teams. Some of us gathered nuts and berries and looked after children, some made clothes out of hides and tinkered with arrowheads, some kept watch or hunted. Our ancestors, unlike the animals around them, were able to accumulate knowledge and, in the warmth of the fire, share it. No need to reinvent the wheel. And so, as biologist E.O. Wilson puts it, “The stage was now set for the biggest-brained of African primates to make the truly defining leap to their ultimate potential.”
When Homo sapiens bid farewell to its distant and close relatives—chimpanzees and baboons, Homo floresiensisand Homo erectus—our tools were unrivaled. We spread across the globe. We were such skilled hunters that we wiped out the large animals that grazed where we roamed, such as the mastodon, the mammoth, and the Irish elk. Our relatives, the Neanderthals. are gone now, too.
Then something strange happened. Our ancestors thought, Wow, it’s so lovely here! Should we stay? We grew less inclined to roam forests and valleys, and in the end, we stopped. Ten thousand years ago, many of us abandoned the nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life. We settled in humid and fertile areas. We established tribes, then villages, towns, and states. We got chiefs, laws, and rules—and looked upon nature through new eyes. Nature was now something we could exploit, conquer, plow, transform, cultivate. We had once searched for food, now we started to make and create food. The Neolithic Revolution was underway, the first of the agricultural revolutions. We didn’t necessarily live longer or get stronger, some research even suggests we lived shorter lives and were smaller in stature, but we multiplied. Oh, how we multiplied.
What was the reason for this change? One theory is that as we became more numerous, and there were fewer large animals to hunt, farming became more reliable. But if we assume that everything is about staying alive, we overlook something crucial about our species: the curiosity, the urge to create, the drive to take our fate into our own hands. We tamed and domesticated, we tried and failed. We cultivated wild wheat, rice, barley, lentils, peas, potatoes. We caught animals, and instead of eating them straight away, we kept them as livestock.
We caught the horse, a wild little creature from the grasslands, and bred it to be big enough to carry and pull loads. We tamed huge beasts of the field, the aurochs, and put them to work. We caught junglefowl and kept them for eggs and cockfights. We transformed the wild boar into a serene creature that provided plenty of meat, and we loved its bacon. New plants were harvested, more animals domesticated and from their bones, hides, and hooves we made our tools. Not only the horse and the cow, but also the cat, the guinea pig, the donkey, the mallard, the water buffalo, the camel, the turkey, the honeybee, the llama, the silkworm, the pigeon, the goose, the yak, the elephant.
When our forefathers and foremothers started domesticating and breeding, they didn't know how it would catch on. Today, humans and livestock make up 96 percent of mammals. Wild animals? There are few of them left, only around 4 percent.
A number of changes take place in animals that we domesticate. Charles Darwin ruminated on this. Why do domesticated animals have so much in common, regardless of species?
Their faces change shape. They develop floppy ears, smaller teeth, bigger stomachs, and are less muscular than their wild ancestors. They rely on their mothers longer. Their brains shrink compared to those of their wild counterparts.
This is referred to as domestication syndrome. Perhaps it’s only logical. The aim of domestication is changing animals’ behavior and body, breeding them into what we need. Homo sapiens was fast becoming “Homo deus,” a godlike species ruling over nature and animals.
We took a leap that distanced us from tens of thousands of years of history and staked out a new path—but without a map. Major changes always have consequences, some visible in the short term, others invisible until they’re upon us. The best of intentions can do irreparable damage.
We made steady improvements, the invention of more machines kicking off the Industrial Revolution. As we grew numerous, and word of famine spread, we were prompted to come up with new ideas. Another revolution came, known as the Green Revolution. How could we produce more food? The Green Revolution built on the Industrial Revolution. Machines were put to work in fields, fertilizers made plants grow quickly, chemicals allowed us to combat pests and fungi. Using principles from factories, we bred animals for the mass production of meat. We maximized crops and made animals grow fast, all with idealism and fervor.
Unease, however, brewed in the shadows. In her book Animal Machines from 1964, British animal activist Ruth Harrison criticized “industrial livestock production” and “animal factories.” In her book Silent Spring from 1962, American marine biologist Rachel Carson warned of the dangers of chemical insecticides. Not only did the poison affect pests, but also other animals and species—including humans. Many insecticides remain in the environment for years. Put simply, they are environmental toxins.
A growing movement of activists thought that our way of living would have consequences. We prospered while rendering the planet almost unlivable for other creatures. We polluted the atmosphere and depleted the seas.
According to biologist E.O. Wilson, we are a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life. He writes that today’s world is “a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology” and that “except for behaving like apes much of the time and suffering genetically limited life spans, we are godlike.”
From this perspective, our intelligence and urge to create is also dangerous. This concept is explored in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In these works, the human brain creates things that are impressive but frightening. In Goethe’s case, ambitious plans upset the balance of nature and cause a tragedy of development. For Shelley, the new creation literally becomes a monster.
Even in the face of these warnings, some enterprising people remain optimistic. Our intelligence has gotten us this far, now it can save us. Problems are solved with new research and smart innovation. If it gets too warm, we’ll develop technology to stop this. If the atmosphere fills with carbon dioxide, we’ll trap and purify it. If we start running out of wild animals to eat, we’ll breed more livestock. What’s that? Fewer fish in the sea? Then we’ll farm more of them.
Yes, fish. Shouldn’t they be domesticated, too?
Some say it started with fish stranded in pools when rivers dried up. Others talk about fish that swam inland at high tide and remained in lagoons. Or did it start with Chinese rulers who wanted fish all year, prompting servants to breed carp in ponds around the palaces? In Europe, experiments with trout were promising. Hatcheries were established, fish released into rivers and lakes.
People could see the money in it. And which fish would people pay the most for? Salmon!
Yes, salmon, king among fish, climbing waterfalls and rapids. Beautiful, wild, and shimmering, alluringly red on the inside, full of goodness and mystery. A superior fish for festive occasions and fancy restaurants.
Imagine being its master. Humans were already masters of the cow, the sheep, the pig, the horse, the chicken, the cat, the llama, the dog … but the salmon? Some tried in the 1950s, in tidal straits and with floating nets. They kept the fish trapped in bays and coves, but it was wild and scared.
Why does something happen? Does it start with one innovator? An environment, a sequence of events?
We started to investigate fish farming in 2016. We were tipped off to the fact that many salmon researchers felt permanently under scrutiny. We made some calls and were surprised. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’ll ruin my vacation,” one researcher said. Another stopped answering the phone. A third said, “If you have anything negative to share about salmon, you need to brace yourself.” A fourth said, “You don’t know what I’m getting at? This is politics. We live in a seafood nation.” These were researchers who had worked on salmon or fish farming projects only to get into conflicts and suffer as a result. They were afraid of coming across as negative, and of not being believed. Some had left the field. This made an impression on us. Researchers are supposed to purvey knowledge, seek the truth. It’s a bad sign for society when they don’t dare speak openly.
Norway, the seafood nation seemed to us, at least back then, to be a place of unsolved mysteries and bottomless controversies. A place where money talked, dual roles were par for the course, and critics were branded activists. This was a realm of lawyers with unknown clients attacking research institutes, and lobbyists writing secret emails to government ministers. Salmon farming was a frontier.
In only a few decades, an industry had emerged that made people rich. According to Forbes, three of the world’s richest people under the age of thirty were salmon heirs, and new seafood billionaires infiltrated the lists of the wealthiest individuals on the planet. They were hailed by the authorities, celebrated by the industry media, and praised by politicians with visions of the bright future of salmon farming. They called it “the salmon dream.” It was applauded in industry-sponsored books and by governmental bodies, shrouded in claims of sustainability, climate friendliness, and feeding the world.
This salmon dream gained momentum in producing countries such as Chile, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and our native Norway, but the wealth and power came at a cost. Defenseless salmon in pens were bred to grow so quickly that their hearts ruptured. Wrasse, which were supposed to eat lice off the salmon, died on the job. Shrimp, lobster, and other fish in the fjord environment, like the wild salmon themselves, are now considered to be “near threatened”—as are researchers seeking knowledge that might curb growth. One side had power, money, and the authorities’ blessing, the other had none of these things.
As we worked, we discovered that the salmon dream was launched with little foresight. Decisions were made in haste to solve problems as they arose. The consequences were only seen later, and these caused more problems. We started to realize that the story of farmed salmon was perhaps not a dream but rather a chain of unintended consequences.
If you put a new animal in a fjord, you set something in motion. And what happens then?
That’s our question. The answer is this book.
