Seafood teams pull tonnes of rubbish from Norwegian fjord

Hundreds of seafood industry volunteers collected more than 15 tonnes of plastic and other waste in a huge clean-up operation in and around Norway’s second largest fjord.

The event, organised by an environmental group known as Framtidshavet , took place over several days on Hardangerfjord.

Henrik Wiedswang Horjen, communications manager at Seafood Norway, said it was painful to see so much rubbish, adding that although the teams had managed to tackle the worst of it, there was still more to do.

This was the second year in succession that the event, known as “Rein Hardangerfjord” had taken place. It was such a huge success last year that it was decided to do it again.

The operation’s fame is now growing internationally and it is attracting a growing number of volunteers from overseas.

Of the 15 tonnes collected, 11 tonnes from the surface, with the remainder from underwater on specially provided workboats.

Horjen said it was the industry’s responsibility to prevent rubbish from being dumped in the first place so it had to do what it could to contribute to the clean-up.

Items that were found included jugs, blowers, Styrofoam, pipes, outdoor furniture while under the turf there were layers upon layers of plastic that had been there for a long time.

Volunteers came from a number of organisations including Seafood Norway and the Norwegian Seafood Council while the commercial contribution included people from companies such as Mørenot, ScaleAQ, Benchmark Genetics and BioFish.

Salmon farming companies such as Mowi, Bremnes Seashore and Lerøy, have their summer own fjord clean-up operations at locations where their farms are based.