Fishing, Icelandic Style

Scandinavian Review, Spring 2009 by Hinrichsen, Don

Iceland has evolved a sophisticated fisheries management system that has the support of the general public as well as the fishing industry. It serves as a model for other coastal countries struggling to manage dwindling stocks offish as demand increases.

AFTER A LIGHT SNOWFALL CAME THE SQUALL, ROARING out of the east. A fierce wind bent the sheet rain sideways, sending it directly into my face. With the rain came slivers of sleet. It felt like a thousand small blades slicing into my exposed flesh. Early March in Iceland is an unpredictable time-sunny onefrour, and lashed by rain, sleet and snow the next. Though the weather was foul, a fishing vessel was still landing its catch of cod at Grindavik harbor, on the southwest coast not far from Reykjavik, the country's capital. Workmen in slickers unloaded the containers full of fresh iced fish onto pallets, which were quickly loaded into trucks and transported to the nearby processing plant operated by one of Iceland's top fishing enterprises, Visir, the fifth largest in the country specializing in groundfish such as cod and haddock.

Like Iceland's other fishing enterprises, Visir is vertically integrated. "We catch the fish, process the fish and market the fish," points out Gudjon Thorbjörnsson, head of special assignments at Visir. "Very little is wasted, as we sell by-catch locally in the markets. And since we control all aspects of fishing, we can manage costs and overheads much better."

Visir's processing plant at Grindavik is one of four scattered around Iceland's tortuous coastline. "No matter where the company's five long-liners are fishing, they are within fairly easy reach of one of our processing plants," explains Thorbjörnsson.

In addition to cod and haddock, the company also exploits ling (Molva dypterygia) and tusk fisheries. At the Grindavik plant, which doubles as the company's headquarters, 30 tons of codfish are being processed on this stormy day out of the 100 tons brought by their boat, the result of just five days of fishing effort.

"Our five long-liners go out in any kind of weather all year round," says Thorbjörnsson. "Our crews consist of 14 men per boat, working for 20 straight days in two 12-hour shifts per day, followed by ten days off. But the boats are at sea most of the time. We only shut down completely for one five-week period over the summer months for vacations."

Thorbjörnsson underscores the fact that all five of Visir's fishing vessels catch fish using only long lines. "We prefer long lines because we feel the fish are better for salûng if caught on hooks, instead of in trawls," he says.

The processing plant is a model of efficiency. The 30 tons of cod are cleaned, split, salted and boxed in one continuous assembly-line-like process. These salted cod are destined for markets in Italy, Greece and Spain. Most of the company's processed fish, 80 percent, is exported to European Union countries, with some products (fish heads) going as far as Nigeria, where they are used in soup.

Long-lining is tough, demanding work. Each ship puts out about 55 kilometers of fishing line, containing around 40,000 hooks. The lines average one fish for every five hooks and are reeled in periodically and the catch is gutted and put on ice.

Each fishing vessel has its own on-board computerized electronic logbook system, called TrackWell, linked to headquarters and each other. This logbook operates in real time and records the exact location of each boat, the species offish they are catching and their size class, the number of hooks used, number offish caught, the bait used, the water depth, sea and air temperature, weather, course and speed, and wave height.

"We know exactly where each boat is fishing and what they are catching every minute," says Thorbjörnsson. "And since the captains share information through the electronic logbook, boats can converge on an area where target species are plentiful."

In addition to quotas for each company, each boat in the country's 1,300strong fishing fleet has a quota as well. In 2008, for instance, Visir was allowed to catch around 16,000 metric tons offish. For the countryas a whole, the company has 6 percent of the total quotas for cod and haddock, along with 1 7 percent of the quotas for ling and 46 percent for tusk. The top ten companies, including Visir, have 50 percent of the entire cod quota in any given year.

IN 2005, THE LAST YEAR FOR WHICH COMPOSITE DATA ARE available, the country's fishing fleets landed 215,000 tons of cod, 266,000 tons of blue whiting (Micromesistius poutassou), 194,000 tons of capelin, 103,000 tons of herring, 97,000 tons of haddock, 74,000 tons of redfish and close to 70,000 tons of saithe. In all, Iceland's fleets hauled in close to 1.7 million tons of fish that year, valued at 68 million Icelandic kroner.

Despite a scarcity of cod in the Baltic and North Sea, Iceland's cod fisheries are in fine shape. This is due in large measure to the national quota system and the fact that fisheries are vigorously managed, not simply exploited.