The Minister of Fisheries yesterday decided to keep the cod quota unchanged for the coming fishing year, as was in fact known beforehand. However, he ignored advice from the Marine Research Institute for most other species, opting for higher quotas than recommended by the MRI. The difference varies, e.g. 10 thousand tonnes for the haddock quota and 25 thousand tonnes for the saithe quota. Many fishing companies can be expected to have difficulty achieving the catch mix implied by the quota decision. The number of by-catch problems is likely to rise in the next fishing year as the fishing companies were able to transfer allocated quota from the last fishing year over into the current one. The cod quota in the last fishing year was 193 thousand tonnes and fishing companies were able to transfer part of that quota between years. The fishing companies will now not be able to transfer as much between years and the by-catch problem can therefore be expected to rise. (VH)
Cod: 130,000 tons – unchanged.
Haddock: 93,000 tons – down 7,000 tons.
Saithe: 65,000 tons – down 10,000 tons.
Ocean Catfish: 13,000 tons – up 500 tons.
Redfish: 50,000 tons – down 7,000 tons.
Greenland Halibut: 15,000 tons – unchanged.
Source: Glitnir
