The Icelandic Minister of Fisheries has decided to keep the cod quota unchanged for the coming fishing year. However, Icelandic bank Glitnir says that he has 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. 10,000t for the haddock quota and 25,000t for the saithe quota. The bank says that many fishing companies can be expected to have difficulty achieving the catch mix implied by the quota decision and that 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 193,000t 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.
