On March 11, 2022, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, President Biden announced that the United States, along with the European Union and other Western allies, was ending normal trade relations with the Kremlin. The economic punishment included a ban on the import of seafood, set to take effect that June. For importers of red king crab, a favorite of the world’s ultra-high-end seafood restaurants, the tick of the clock was deafening. At the time, Russia was responsible for 94% of the global supply.
In the tiny Norwegian fishing village of Bugøynes, an exporter named Svein Ruud sensed his moment had come. The remote Barents Sea, which Norway shares with Russia, is the only place left on Earth where you can reliably find these crabs. Alaska used to dominate the market, but the U.S. overfished the Bering Sea’s supply by the 1980s, and it’s been unable to meaningfully recover because of warming waters.
Ruud set up his company, Norway King Crab, in Bugøynes back in 2008, and was gradually making the village of 200 the red king crab capital of Norway. Since the ban on Russian seafood, it’s the red king crab capital of the Western world.
That’s quite the turnaround for a village that, 40 years ago, in the wake of the cod collapse, was so broke and hopeless that it asked the government to be relocated. Even more incredible is the species that pulled Bugøynes back from the brink shouldn’t even be in the Barents Sea in the first place.
