Jakub Zaborowski

The wind here cuts deeper than back home, but it’s also oddly cleansing. A week ago, I stood ankle-deep in fish guts, staring at the conveyor belt as lifeless salmon slid past, and I thought, “This is it. I’m done.” The job, the paycheck, the constant stink of death—I left it all behind.

I’m from a small town in Poland, where options feel as narrow as the streets. When my friend suggested Iceland, he didn’t sugarcoat it: “Crappy work, great money.” So I ended up in the Westfjords, working at a salmon farm. For six months, I hauled, sorted, and gutted farmed fish while the mountains loomed indifferent. They called it sustainable aquaculture. I called it a horror show.

The worst moment came when a fish, more zombie than salmon, was flung onto my station. Its flesh was raw, pocked with holes from sea lice, and its eyes—one milky, the other bulging—seemed to accuse me. It wasn’t just a job anymore; it was complicity.

My cigarette breaks were the only refuge, and that’s when I met her. Kristin was leaning against the chain-link fence, camera in hand, trying to catch a glimpse of the pens. She didn’t look like an activist—more like someone who’d fought her battles and kept fighting anyway. I didn’t snitch. Instead, we talked.

She told me things I didn’t know: the mass die-offs, the escapees threatening wild salmon, the lies wrapped in “sustainability.” I told her things she didn’t know: the routine cruelty, the whispers among workers about sick fish dumped offshore. She called it “zombie salmon.”

Last week, I handed in my resignation. Kristin says I’m brave. I don’t feel brave. I feel angry—angry that I spent 23 years believing survival meant staying silent.

Now, I’m learning to speak up. Kristin and I are together, and while she documents the horror, I help however I can. It's not much, but it feels like the first honest thing I’ve done in years.