4,000 King Crabs was Tuesday dumped outside the office of the Minister of Fisheries in Oslo. Photo: Neptune Network.
Representatives from the environmental group Neptune Network and the Fishermen’s Association in Hammerfest in northern Norway dumped a huge load of King Crabs outside the main entrance to the Minister of Fisheries Office in Oslo on Tuesday.
The environmentalists and fishermen say the King Crabs negatively alter the sea’s natural biodiversity.
The king crab was brought into the Barents Sea in the 1960s by Soviet scientists, and since then, the population has grown immensely. In the early 90ties the first King Crabs come to the Norwegian Varanger fjord area and since then the stocks have migrated to the western part of the Barents Sea, including all fjords in Finnmark.
Some estimates say there are more than 20 million in the Barents Sea. The consequence of the king crab explosion may be that native species disappear.
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Neptune Network says that the Norwegian Minister of Fisheries, Lisbeth Berg-Hansen, was invited to an open meeting about the problem on Monday, but refused to attend. The Minister has also refused to participate at a open meeting about the King Crab problem to be arranged in Finnmark next March.
- We do this to put attention to the growing environmental problem the King Crabs pose in Norwegian waters, says Neptune Network spokesman Frank-Hugo Storelv in a phone interview with BarentsObserver.
- Norway is violating the international convention on biodiversity by not taking any measures to stop the dissemination of the King Crab stocks, argues Frank-Hugo Storelv.
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This is the third time that the environmentalists dump King Crabs outside the office entrance to the Ministry of Fisheries in Oslo. In October, Neptune Network dumped 200 crabs and in November they dumped 2,000 and on Tuesday this week 4,000.
- Next time it can well be 8,000 unless the Minister accepts our invitations to talk about the problem at an open meeting, says Storelv. He more than hint that next time they dump crabs in a protest, it can be outside the Prime Minister’s Office in Oslo.
- We will continue until the Minister starts listening to us and if the Minister of Fisheries doesn’t want to listen to the arguments, we could go to her chief, says Frank-Hugo Storelv.
Fishermen from Hammerfest in Finnmark and members of Neptune Network at the prostest outside the mian entrance of the Norwegian Minsitry of Fisheries in Oslo. Photo: Neptune Network.
