Introduction
Norway is a global leader in fish production from both fisheries and aquaculture . Advocates for Norwegian seafood products claim many products, such as farm-raised salmon, can play a pivotal role in re ducing the environmental footprint of food production. However, as seafood is highly perishable, seafood supply chains are vulnerable to global economic shocks which disrupt the processing and shipment of products. In this study, we focused on how different economic shocks in the previous 10 years (specifically, China’s ban on Norwegian salmon products from 2010-2014, Russia’s ban on Norwegian seafood products from 2014-present, trade restrictions due to the global COVID19 pandemic 2020-2021, and Brexit’s impact on Norwegian mackerel fisheries due to a lapse in the Common Fisheries Policy in 2021) impacted the logistics network of salmon, cod, mackerel, king crab, and snow crab products . These product groups were selected due to their relevance to the Norwegian seafood market’s environmental footprint.
We used trade data from 2010 -2021 (purchased from the Norwegian toll office) to quantify the volume seafood products traded, their mode of transport, and destination country and openly available export data through the European Market Observatory for Fisheries and Aquaculture to track where countries that processed the largest volume of fish . Further, we conducted semi-structured interviews to contextualize our data and analyses. We found that the Norwegian seafood supply chain has been resilient to economic shocks in the previous 10 years . Volumes of products remained high throughout economic shocks. However, d isruptions to the supply chain resulted in shifts in mode of transport and in exporting countries . Economic shocks also negatively impacted the environmental footprint of products d ue to changes in packaging requirements by importers (i.e., during the COVID19 pandemic) , which countries processed the most fish by volume, and changes in mode of transport for different product group s. Bans or trade restrictions did not result in decreases to volumes of fish traded ; rather, fish were traded in different markets where bans or restrictions were not in place.