The Predatory Foodie

A fleet of Russian fishing vessels, along with the buoys and steel pots used to catch king crab commercially.

I’m a killer. A crab-catching, crustacean-jabbing, pot-boiling predator. But I come by it honestly. After all, my red king crab spree is all in the name of environmentalism. Really.

Nose-to-tail, slow food, the 100-mile diet, organic... changing what we eat can change the world, and I’m totally on board with that. But then there are those of us willing to take things a bit farther by heading off to northern Norway, slipping into an orange survival suit and inserting ourselves right into the food chain.

Yes, I’m here to help. And I’m going in deep. 

From left to right, clockwise: 1 The Norwegian town of Kirkenes. 2 The town sign. 3 Lars Petter Øie and diver Anton Kalinin prefer fishing by hand. 4 Commercial trawlers.

Lars Petter Øie picks us up for our King Crab Safari from the port area of Kirkenes, where the clapboard houses are painted in a crayon box of colours and the inland climate means that ice and dry air sub for the rain and snow in other parts of this lovely, brooding country. Driving away, I spot large fishing trawlers and huge crab traps – wire “pots” strung with nylon webbing – stacked ashore.

I’m here to catch and consume the invasive red king variety. Native to Alaskan seas and the North Pacific, red king crabs were introduced into the Barents Sea, just north of the Arctic Circle, in the 1960s – a plan that most agree Joseph Stalin hatched decades earlier. The idea was to provide a food source for Russians working in the frozen North. But in the 50 years since, the non-indigenous crabs have multiplied exponentially – there are now untold millions – and have migrated rapidly along the Norwegian coastline. Commercial fishing of the crabs only began here in 2002. “At the very beginning [the 1970s], we were afraid they would eat up the coastline, destroying the natural plant life, and that the Norwegian government wasn’t doing anything to stop it,” explains Øie’s wife and partner, Guro Brandshaug, when we arrive at their beautiful hand-built house at the base of Jarfjord. 

King crab safari visitors model their orange survival suits.

Young red king crabs gather in shallow water and swarm in pods so large – often 10,000 or more – they look like a red tide. Seemingly indiscriminate about what they eat, the fear is that they could reach as far south as Spain and Portugal, devouring everything in their path.