IN FALL OF 2023, Elias Thorarinsson stood alone on the banks of a small river in the remote western fjords of his native Iceland. He was looking down through the country’s famous crystalline waters at a large Atlantic salmon. It was a monster, and it had to go.
As anglers we sometimes feel like we to catch a fish. But this was different. On August 20, at least 3,500 farmed salmon had escaped from net pens (an enclosed floating cage) in Patreksfjörður Fjord, about a five-hour drive northwest of Reykjavík. The pen’s owner, Arctic Fish, is based a couple hours north, in Ísafjörður, but it is owned by Norwegian-based Mowi, by far the world’s largest salmon-farming company.
