Thursday, 7th October 2010
Iceland’s sudden taste for mackerel is just plain greed
[Published in The Scotsman, 7th October 2010]
Peter Jones’ article (‘Fishy smell over our part in mackerel quotas’) neatly summarised the Icelandic viewpoint, but can I offer an alternative interpretation?
While Iceland and the Faroes do a good line in selling themselves as the poor, wee victims of the big bad EU, the facts tell a different story.
Iceland has traditionally not fished mackerel in any quantity. In 2005, its mackerel catch was just 363 tonnes. But by 2008, this figure had rocketed to 112,353 tonnes – up an exponential 30,000%.
Over the same period, the EU’s mackerel catch fell 20%, to 208,355 tonnes, while Norway’s catch rose 1.5% to 121,495 tonnes.
Iceland says global warming is causing the mackerel stock to migrate northwards into its waters.
While that may be partly true, isn’t it funny how Iceland’s sudden taste for mackerel seems to coincide with the country’s financial meltdown? It certainly gives a new meaning to ‘being in hot water’!
In truth, Iceland realised that its only option following the collapse of its banks was to hoover up as much fish as it could get its hands on, regardless of the long-standing agreements in place between the other Coastal States.
Iceland, furthermore, had an eye on possible EU membership and wanted to bump up its quotas for as many species as possible in case it was forced into the Common Fisheries Policy, allowing it to argue it had historically high quotas.
That is what explains Iceland’s 2010 quota of 130,000 tonnes – a naked attempt to shore up its economy at any cost to its neighbours.
Far from being ‘excluded’ from Coastal States negotiations, as they claim, Iceland walked away from talks after the EU and Norway questioned its reasoning for demanding such an enormous quota. Their answer: because we want it.
As for the Faroe Islands, they decided they wouldn’t be left out of the party. As a non-EU member (although a dependency of Denmark), they thought they could disregard their historical quota of roughly 4% of the catch entirely and increase it overnight to 15%, or 85,000 tonnes. Not bad for a country of 50,000 people!
