ICELAND: Jobs May Go Down With Cod

By Lowana Veal Reprint | | Print |

Lowana Veal

REYKJAVIK, Jul 10 2007 (IPS) - A crisis is looming in Iceland as, once again, cod populations have crashed.

To people living elsewhere, this should perhaps come as no surprise as cod populations have been low for some time in many countries, and bans have even been imposed or recommended.

But Iceland, like New Zealand, prides itself on a fisheries management system designed to keep cod populations stable or on the increase, as fishing is a vital part of the Icelandic culture, and many rural communities depend on it.

Iceland’s fishing management system has been based on fishing no more than 25 prcent of the total population for each species. The Marine Research Institute estimates the size of the relevant population, such as cod, and then makes recommendations accordingly.

The Ministry of Fisheries then announces what the actual catch limits will be for the following year. For cod, the actual catch limits decided by the ministry have always been consistently higher than the MRC’s recommendations.

But not this time. This year, the cod population and the number of young fish are at a record low, while the spawning population is only half that which is supposed to give a maximum fishing catch.

Minister Einar K. Gudfinnsson has now announced that the fisheries industry must abide by the MRC’s recommendations – namely, a decrease in total catch from 193,000 to 130,000 tonnes for the next fishing year, which starts Sep. 1, and a total catch of only 20 percent of the population.

The decision had been anticipated but feared, as some fishing communities, especially those in the West Fjords, could be severely affected. Iceland has a quota system for its fishing industry, whereby boats were given quotas in 1986 after their catches for the previously three years had been averaged.

But some companies and fishers do not have quotas, and lease them instead. These people are particularly concerned, as with a substantial reduction of cod to be caught, there will be less quotas to be leased. The quota lease price may also increase as a result.

Other companies, which do have quotas, fear that they may have to reduce their workforce. And local authority officials are concerned about the effect that reduced quotas will have on fishing communities as a whole, where sometimes 90 percent of the workforce is involved in fisheries in some way.

Many fear, too, that there will be more quota swindling, especially in terms of discarding undersized fish while at sea to maximise returns.

However, many fishers and boat owners are highly critical of how the MRC carries out its predictions. They say that there is ample cod in the sea but the MRC does not look in the right places when it does its surveys. Instead, they say the MRC surveys the same areas each time – which may have worked 10 years ago but not any more, as the fish have moved.

In turn, the MRC says that recently there has indeed been ample cod in the fishing grounds, but this is because recruitment between 1997 and 2000 was around average. These are the fish that are being caught now. But recruitment between 2001 and 2006 was much lower – and it is the 2001 brood that will be fished in the coming year.

Another main reason for the reduced quota is to improve the breeding population. Fry from cod that is at least 10 years old has a better chance of surviving than that from younger fish. Now only 5 percent of the breeding cod population is 10 years or older, whereas 20-25 years ago it was 20 percent.

Yet another concern is the type of fishing gear used. Bottom trawls, which are used extensively in Iceland, damage spawning grounds and are indiscriminate in what they catch. Nets have also been criticised as they catch only the largest fish.

Others say that the capelin catch should be reduced substantially, as cod eats capelin. Capelin has not been as abundant in Iceland waters as it was. And the powerful boat-owners association is calling for a substantial increase in commercial whaling, as whales compete with cod for capelin as a food source.

Chemical engineer Jonas Bjarnason says that there are actually 10-12 populations of cod around Iceland, not just one, and that it does not make sense to decide a quota for the whole country without taking each individual population into account.

There has also been concern about changes in behaviour, as in one fishing ground cod have been found at much greater depths than usual.

The quota system itself is being questioned. One of the designers of the current system, Stefan Thorarinsson, said in Morgunbladid newspaper at the weekend: “The reason that the quota system has not produced better results is primarily that we have consistently fished beyond the tolerance of the fish population.”