Former trainee at the Norwegian Seafood Council and scientist at Nofima, Martine Meland talks research in food sustainability.
Our mission is to study how food can be more sustainable for everyone
Martine Meland
Scientist at Nofima
Live-Landing for Higher Quality
Martine Meland, a former NSC trainee who helped produce the 2024 version of this report, is working on an article about live-landing haddock when we talk.
‘The boat takes wild haddock from the ocean, and keeps the fish alive on board until they deliver them to the filleting plants on land,’ she explains. The result is, unsurprisingly, a better-quality fish.
‘This means the filleting plants can make more money out of it and the customer can get a better product,’ says Martine.
Introduction to the World of Seafood
Martine grew up in Nittedal, about an hour from Oslo, but with a grandmother from the north: that is where she says she was first ‘introduced to the fishing community’.
She studied marine logistics and economics at Molde university, before completing a master’s degree in fisheries and aquaculture science at Tromsø University, which is when she went to the NSC.
Her time in market research at the council put her in good stead for her current role – issues such as market access and consumer trends are all intricately linked to driving more sustainable food solutions.
And her work at Nofima is varied too. Having talked about the potential for live-landing haddock, Martine moves onto an area she’ll be looking into more in 2025: seaweed.
Photo: Sverre-Leander Sundset
Seaweed for the Future
‘Seaweed is a resource with a lot of potential for the future,’ she says, ‘especially since it doesn’t require a lot of energy to cultivate.’
It also ticks boxes for health and cost but Martine notes that, while popular in much of Asia, seaweed isn’t typically part of the Norwegian diet – at least not yet.
‘It would really be interesting to see how we can integrate seaweed into our lifestyle,’ she says.
It’s about What the Market Wants
Where her time at the NSC was about consumer trends, at Nofima, Martine explains that her role is more business-to-business; more about ‘what the market wants’. But these are two sides of the same seafood story.
‘We are doing an important job in getting healthier seafood out to the consumer,’ she says. ‘From there, the Seafood Council does a great job promoting it and getting people to eat more seafood.’
Photo: Lisanto / Unsplash
Sustainability from the Consumer Perspective
Photo: Martine Meland
Sustainability from the Consumer Perspective
Even as this work helps drive forward more sustainable seafood practices, the very idea of sustainability – particularly in the consumer mind – is evolving.
‘There was a time where everyone wanted to use the term ‘sustainability’, and maybe it's been used too much,’ concedes Martine. ‘But sustainability is still very, very important. And, as an industry, we’re going to have tighter requirements around sustainability and stricter rules to follow.’
She accepts that ‘people have different opinions around sustainability’ but also feels that people ‘do believe we’re all trying to do better’.
‘At Nofima, our mission is to study how food can be more sustainable for everyone,’ she says. ‘How we can get more quality out of the fish we eat and reduce what we waste.’
