Following consultations with the foreign affairs committee, Faroese fisheries minister Høgni Hoydal has set this year’s quota for the Faroese fleet’s blue whiting fishery.
The decision follows the failure of the coastal states last year to reach an agreement on blue whiting quotas for 2016. This year’s quota is set at 275,832 tonnes, plus 71,475 tonnes carried over uncaught from last year’s quota. This comes to an overall quota of almost 350,000 tonnes, although 91,500 tonnes are used for quota exchanges with the European Union, Greenland and Russia for fishing rights elsewhere, so in real terms this gives the Faroese fleet access to 255,807 tonnes of blue whiting in 2016.
