Despite growing protests from Scottish fishermen Iceland fisheries minister said that his country’s trawlers have the right to fish greater quantities mackerel from its waters. Scottish fishermen have expressed fury that Iceland and the Faroe Islands have massively increased quotas of the fish they can catch. The Faroe Islands, which is an autonomous Danish territory that is not bound by European Union rules, said it will catch 85,000 tonnes.
Iceland also decided to raise its quota to 130,000 tonnes, compared to the usual 2,000 tonnes agreed upon in an accord with the EU, the Faroe Islands and Norway in 1999. Commenting on that Icelandic fisheries minister Jon Bjarnason told that his country’s trawler fish was entitled to catch the fish within its waters because as a coastal state and it is a huge amount of mackerel in the Icelandic fisheries zone, but of course we want to come to an agreement with our countries who are getting mackerel.
Iceland and the Faroe Islands have been accused of exploiting the growing numbers of mackerel numbers. But Bjarnason said global warming provided a better explanation as to why the increasing numbers of the fish had moved north into Icelandic waters. Fisheries Secretary Richard Lochhead described the decision as “wholly unacceptable”, and said it risked harming well-managed stocks of the fish.
Europe and Norway set their own quotas unilaterally, which they said was in line with previous years. The Faroese trebled their quota, arguing that migrating mackerel shoals have been steadily moving north as the Atlantic warms.
