TED LOGARDT
Why wild Atlantic salmon still need us
Miraculous as they are, Atlantic salmon cannot survive every mistake we make, says the NASF’s Dagur Fannar Ólafsson
I HAVE never met an angler who can speak about Atlantic salmon for long before falling quiet.
It usually happens after the stories. After the first fish, the lost fish, the pool that never leaves the mind, the summer evening when the river seemed to breathe. Sooner or later there is a pause, because everyone who has spent time with salmon knows there is something in the fish that cannot be fully explained by numbers, technique or memory. A salmon is not just a quarry. It is a messenger from a wilder, colder world.
It leaves the river as a smolt, disappears into the North Atlantic, crosses borders no human can see, feeds in distant waters, avoids everything the ocean throws at it, then returns with astonishing precision to the river of its birth. For anglers, that journey is part of the magic. For conservationists, it is also the problem. A fish that lives in so many places can be harmed in many places. A salmon river can be protected, but if the fish is killed at sea, blocked on migration, weakened by parasites, or genetically diluted by escaped farmed salmon, the river will still fall silent.
For anglers, that journey is part of the magic. For conservationists, it is also the problem
A pristine Icelandic river, a refuge for wild salmon running the gauntlet of pressures facing its outward and return journey, yet still a place of risk through introgression by salmon-farm escapees.
SARA RONHOLT
The NASF’s mission
The North Atlantic Salmon Fund (NASF) was founded in 1989 to support the work of Icelandic businessman, angler and conservationist Orri Vigfússon, who devoted his life to wild Atlantic salmon.
The fund is supported by institutions, organisations and individuals on both sides of the Atlantic, working through a network of affiliates and partners across the salmon’s range. Its mission is simple to say yet difficult to achieve: to return Atlantic salmon stocks to their historic abundance and ensure their existence for future generations.
A fish protected in one country can be lost in another
This mission matters because the Atlantic salmon is not a local fish in any simple sense. They belong to individual rivers, but also to the ocean. They connect Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Ireland, Britain, mainland Europe and North America. A fish protected in one country can be lost in another. A smolt leaving a small river may enter an ocean shaped by industries and policies far beyond the reach of the people that care about it.
This is why the NASF has always had to think bigger than one river, one season or one political border.
Orri Vigfússon, who created a legacy that continues to this day.
NASF
Orri’s legacy
The story of the NASF is also the story of Orri. He grew up fishing Iceland’s rivers and understood, perhaps earlier than most, that saving salmon would require more than anger, nostalgia or well-meaning speeches. It would require practical deals. It would require sitting down with the people catching salmon commercially and finding a way forward that respected both fish and fishermen.
Orri’s great innovation was the commercial conservation agreement. Rather than treating fishermen as enemies, he helped create buyouts that compensated them for leaving salmon in the sea and, where possible, supported transitions into more sustainable fisheries. It was conservation with rolled-up sleeves. It was not romantic, but it was radical.
The focus was the feeding grounds where salmon from thousands of rivers gather. Off Greenland and the Faroe Islands, fish from both sides of the Atlantic mix. Some come from strong rivers, many from fragile ones. In a mixed-stock fishery, no net can choose only the surplus fish. When salmon are harvested there, weak rivers can be unintentionally damaged.
Thanks to Orri and today’s team at NASF, the cessation of commercial salmon fishing in Faroese waters has allowed many hundred of thousands more salmon to return to rivers in the North Atlantic.
TED LOGARDT
That is Orri’s legacy: not only the fish saved, but the method. He showed that conservation can be practical, human and persistent
Orri brokered the first NASF agreement in the Faroe Islands in 1991, an agreement that helped to bring the Faroese mixed-stock salmon fishery to a halt. Since then, there has been no commercial salmon fishery in Faroese waters. In Greenland, the challenge was different: a vast country, isolated settlements and a long-standing subsistence fishery that included salmon. The NASF partnered with the Atlantic Salmon Federation (ASF) in the US and Canada on the high seas buyout agreements. That partnership remains the core of this work today. The NASF and ASF have helped to keep quotas at record lows and have worked towards improved licensing and reporting. Those agreements have saved hundreds of thousands of salmon and given countless fish the chance to reach home water.
It is easy to talk about conservation in grand terms. It is harder to do it year after year, across languages, laws, livelihoods and politics. That is Orri’s legacy: not only the fish saved, but the method. He showed that conservation can be practical, human and persistent.
Since Orri’s passing in 2017, the NASF has continued his work while also adapting to new threats. The old problems have not disappeared: high-seas fisheries, coastal nets, river nets, dams and habitat damage still matter. But in Iceland, and across much of the North Atlantic, one threat now dominates the conversation: open-net-pen salmon farming.
Our biggest challenge: open-net-pen salmon farming.
NASF
The new front line
For anyone who loves wild salmon, open-net-pen aquaculture is impossible to ignore.
The sales pitch is always clean. Food production. Jobs. Rural communities. Efficiency. But the reality is messier.
Open-net pens place huge numbers of farmed salmon directly into the marine environment. They are not closed systems. Waste, feed, chemicals, parasites and disease do not stay inside the cages. They move through fjords and coastal waters, the same waters used by wild salmon and other migratory fish.
For migrating wild salmon smolts, sea lice from farms can be deadly. These young fish leave the river small and vulnerable, beginning the most dangerous part of their lives. When they pass through areas with heavy lice pressure, the odds can tilt sharply against them.
Pollution from farms can damage seabeds beneath and around cages. Escaped farmed salmon can enter rivers and breed with wild fish, weakening the genetic fitness that has been shaped over thousands of years in individual river systems.
There is also the welfare question. Mortality in open-net pens can be extremely high. A food system in which a large percentage of the animals die before harvest should make anyone pause, regardless of whether they fish. Then there are broader concerns: chemical residues, microplastics and the cumulative pressure placed on coastal ecosystems that were never designed to absorb industrial-scale farming in open water.
The farms were far from daily life for most Icelanders and the language around aquaculture was often technical, corporate and reassuring
The NASF’s position is not complicated. Wild salmon should not be asked to pay the price for cheap production. If salmon farming is to continue, it must move away from open systems that externalise environmental damage into public waters.
The result of open-pen salmon aquaculture: Divers with spear guns capturing escaped farmed salmon on an Icelandic river to avoid interbreeding and genetic mutation with precious wild fish.
JELLE MUL/NASF
When the country woke up
In Iceland, the fight against open-net-pen farming has moved from a technical debate to the public eye. When the NASF launched its “Against the Current” campaign in 2018, pressure was growing to expand salmon farming into Iceland’s fjords, but many people still did not understand the full impact of the industry. The farms were far from daily life for most Icelanders and the language around aquaculture was often technical, corporate and reassuring. Wild salmon needed someone to make the case in plain language.
Then, in 2023, a major farmed salmon escape changed the conversation. Suddenly, the risk was no longer abstract. Farmed salmon were being found in wild rivers, and anglers, guides and local communities could see, with their own eyes, what conservationists had warned for years. These were not theoretical concerns hidden in reports. They were living fish, in wild water, where they did not belong.
For many Icelanders, the escape revealed how quickly a private industrial accident can become a public ecological problem. It also reminded people that wild salmon are not only important to anglers. They are part of Iceland’s natural inheritance, tied to rivers, valleys, communities and identity. Once that inheritance is damaged, it may not be possible to buy it back.
Public opinion has shifted sharply since then. According to nationwide surveys, the vast majority of Icelanders now oppose open-net-pen aquaculture, with 65 per cent against it and only 15 per cent in favour of it. The remainder are undecided. That change came through campaigning, legal work, public testimony, media pressure and the persistence of people who refused to let the issue disappear into technical language.
Salmon rivers are part of the country’s identity, but they are also part of its rural economy
More than a fish
It is easy to speak about wild salmon as a conservation issue. It is harder, but just as important, to speak about them as part of people’s lives.
Across the North Atlantic, salmon support far more than rivers. They support guides, lodge staff, tackle shops, farmers, chefs, drivers and small rural communities. In some places, a good salmon season does not only mean good fishing. It means work, visitors, income and a reason for people to stay connected to valleys that might otherwise lose them.
If the salmon were to disappear, what would happen to the local communities, habitats and heritage that salmon have created over time?
TED LOGARDT
In Iceland, this connection is especially strong. Salmon rivers are part of the country’s identity, but they are also part of its rural economy. A returning salmon can create value many times before it ever reaches an angler’s net. It brings people to remote places, fills guesthouses and dinner tables, and gives communities a reason to protect the water running through them.
That is why the decline of wild salmon is never only an environmental loss. It is also a human loss. When salmon disappear, something goes missing from the river, but something also goes missing from the people around it. The guide who has spent a lifetime reading water loses more than work. The farmer who has protected a riverbank loses part of their land’s story. The young angler loses the chance to feel what previous generations felt. The community loses a visitor, a season, a tradition and a reason to gather around the river.
Protecting wild salmon means protecting more than a species. It means protecting the people, skills, stories and local economies that have grown around them. It means recognising that a salmon returning to its river can be worth far more than a farmed fish in a cage.
For the NASF, that is part of why our work matters. The goal is not simply to save salmon in the abstract; it is to keep rivers alive, keep rural communities connected to them, and make sure that the people who depend on wild fish are not left watching a way of life disappear.
NASF have an army of volunteers committed to protecting the future of Atlantic salmon, like this group with a haul of escaped farmed salmon caught in an Icelandic river.
NASF
NASF volunteers
NASF volunteers play a key role in the work of the organisation, and the group has continued to grow. In 2025, there were 42 active volunteers in Iceland, taking part in a wide range of projects that support the protection of wild Atlantic salmon stocks.
Their contributions include outreach and education, events, fundraising, and merchandise sales, as well as many other projects that support our goals. Volunteers have also helped strengthen the NASF’s network, both in Iceland and through international cooperation.
With their interest, knowledge and time, the volunteers are an invaluable support to the NASF’s work and the goals the organisation works towards.
We spoke with one of our volunteers, Alfreð, who explained his connection to salmon.
“For me, salmon are not just a fish; they are the heart of the river and the reason I get to work doing what I love,” he says. “As a guide, every summer I see how much this unique species means to people, to nature and to the communities around our rivers.
Conservation can become abstract when it is spoken in acronyms and impact assessments. A person talking about a river he loves is harder to dismiss
“But with this experience also comes responsibility. We need to show salmon respect and make sure we treat the rivers accordingly. What has happened in Norway and in other places shows us how quickly things can change if we are not careful. I want future generations to be able to experience the same magic and the same life in the river that we enjoy today.”
Icelandic salmon guide Alfreð Logi Ásgeirsson recognises that the pleasure derived for salmon cannot be taken for granted.
NASF
What happens to the old pools when no one waits beside them in June light, looking for a fish that may have crossed an ocean?
That kind of testimony matters because it brings the issue back from policy to place. Conservation can become abstract when it is spoken in acronyms and impact assessments. A person talking about a river he loves is harder to dismiss.
What happens when the salmon are gone? The final question is the one none of us want to ask, but every salmon angler carries it somewhere inside: what happens when the fish are gone?
Not reduced. Not managed into a shadow of themselves. Gone.
What happens to the rivers? What happens to the people, businesses and communities whose identity is tied to returning fish? What happens to the stories that fathers and mothers pass to children? What happens to the old pools when no one waits beside them in June light, looking for a fish that may have crossed an ocean?
A river without salmon is still a river, but it is also a sentence with a missing word.
That is why the NASF exists. Not because salmon are easy to save, but because they are too important to lose. The work began with Orri Vigfússon and his belief that practical conservation could change the fate of a species. It continues now in courtrooms, coastal communities, river valleys, public campaigns and the stubborn hearts of people who refuse to accept decline as destiny.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dagur Fannar Ólafsson
Dagur Fannar Ólafsson works as a Programming Associate at NASF and studied law at Reykjavík University. He is also a salmon-fishing guide on the Norðurá River and has spent time by the water throughout his life, having learned about the Norðurá from his father, who worked as a guide on the river for 20 years.
