The king crab in Norway: where it came from and how big it gets

The story is short and unusually well documented. Between 1961 and 1969 Soviet marine biologists carried red king crabs from the North Pacific — Kamchatka, the Sea of Okhotsk — and released them into the Murman coast of the Barents Sea. The aim was a new commercial fishery in cold water where the species had never lived. It worked better than anyone expected.

By the 1970s the crab was reproducing on its own. By the 1990s it had crossed into Norwegian waters around Varangerfjord, the long inlet that Kirkenes sits on. From there it kept going: westward along Finnmark, past the North Cape, into the fjords of Troms. The king crab in Norway today is a self-sustaining population that arrived within the lifetime of the fishermen who now catch it.

That history explains something you will hear on the boat. The crew talk about the crab the way people talk about a newcomer who turned out to be useful: it is an introduced species, it changed the seabed it moved into, and it is also the most valuable thing many small boats in eastern Finnmark pull up all year. Both halves of that are true, and the guides say so plainly.

For a visitor it means one practical thing: this is a fishery you are allowed to take part in. Norway wants the crab harvested, and the tours that let you haul a pot yourself sit inside that policy rather than around the edge of it.

Temperature is the thing that stops it. The red king crab is a cold-water animal: it does best between 2 and 8 °C, has been recorded from −1.6 up to 18 °C at different life stages, and larvae in particular are fussy. West and south of Tromsø the Gulf Stream keeps the coast milder, and the dense, commercially useful concentrations thin out.

So the map of the king crab in Norway runs roughly from the Russian border in the east to the waters around Tromsø in the west. Kirkenes sits in the middle of the strongest grounds — locals call it the king crab town and the fishery there is a real industry. Tromsø sits at the western end, where the crab is present in the fjords and a boat can reliably find it, but where the population is thinner than in Varanger.

This matters when you are choosing a trip. In Kirkenes the safari is built around an established commercial fishery: $279 takes a RIB out in summer, $369 runs a snowmobile sled across the frozen fjord in winter. In Tromsø the safari is built around a working boat going to pots its skipper set in fjords he knows — $265 and $361 both work that way, and both run from quays in the middle of town.

One is the heart of the range, the other is the edge of it. The crab on the plate at the end is the same animal.

Norway runs the king crab as two different things at once, split by a line in the sea near the North Cape. East of it, in the Varanger grounds around Kirkenes, the crab is a managed commercial fishery with quotas, licensed boats and a very high price per kilo. The aim there is a stable, valuable stock.

West of that line, including the waters around Tromsø, the policy flips. Here the aim is to slow the spread, so the crab may be taken far more freely. That is the legal background to a king crab safari Tromso: the boat you go out on is harvesting an animal the state would rather see harvested.

For you this shows up in small ways. The crew will show you how they measure a crab and which ones go back over the side. They will tell you where the pots sat and for how long. On $265 and $310 you handle the rope and the trap yourself, which is legal precisely because of where you are on the map.

It also explains the price. King crab is one of the most valuable shellfish in the world, and a portion of it in a Tromsø restaurant costs real money on its own. When you compare $265 with a restaurant bill rather than with a sightseeing cruise, the arithmetic looks different.

The meat is white, faintly sweet and firmer than brown crab, and it comes out of the leg in long clean pieces rather than in flakes. It needs very little: boiling in salted sea water, then butter, lemon and bread. Every boat on this page serves it close to that way, and the ones that add anything add a soup alongside rather than a sauce on top.

The usual portion on a safari is one crab between two people, which comes out as a plate of legs and claws each. It is generous without being a banquet, and it is the part of the day that reviews mention most. On $265 the eating happens ashore in a restaurant after the boat comes in; on $310 and $361 it happens on board while you are still out in the fjord.

If seafood beyond crab is what you are after, $174 is a fishing trip that cooks your own cod into a soup on deck, and it carries 743 reviews at 4.8 — more than any other trip on this site. It is a different day, and it is covered on its own page.

It is an incomer. Released into the Barents Sea in the 1960s, established by the 1970s, in Norwegian fjords from the 1990s.

Tromsø is the western edge. The crab likes 2 to 8 °C; the coast south of here is warmer, so this is where the dense grounds end.

It is big. Over a metre across the legs, several kilos in the hand, and one animal feeds two people.

You are allowed to help. West of the North Cape the policy is harvest, which is why a king crab safari Tromso can hand you the rope instead of a viewing platform.