"The fish smell disappears in the early stages, then it smells like any other leather," says the owner of the only fish tannery in Europe and is also the sales manager of Icelandic company Atlantic Leather, Steinunn Gunnsteinsdóttir. The tannery has already processed lots of skins from different types of fish such as salmon, perch, cod, and wolffish, since 1994.
The tanning process takes between three and four weeks, and 19 employees now produce 10,000 skins, or nearly a tonne, of fish leather a month.
The company gets all its fish from sustainable stocks, via Icelandic, Norwegian and Faroe Island fishing fleets, and unlike the worst examples in the global cow leather industry its tanning process is as environmentally friendly as possible.
This fish skin is the fruit of several attempts of the Gunnsteinsdóttir family.
More details of this fishy story on BBC.
(Image Credit: Atlantic Leather)