Pelagic uncertainty between Faroe Islands and Iceland

January 03, 2018

The Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture decided on the 30th of December 2017 to revoke all permits for Faroese vessles to fish in Icelandic waters. This means that all regulations that allow Faroese vessels to fish in Icelandic waters were revoked on January 1st, 2018. This is in light of that the two countries were unable to reach an agreement on mutual access to each other's waters to catch blue whiting and the Norwegian-Icelandic herring. According to a press release from the Ministry of Industries and Innovation the reasons for this were that the Faroese were unvilling to accept an unchanged agreement and were demanding increased rights to catch groundfish in Icelandic waters as well as the removal of restrictions on processing of capelin for human consumption. The revoking of permits has already been communicated to Faroese authorities.

The question of interest is then what effects will this have on the pelagic sector? Companies such as Síldarvinnslan had already planned to send their vessels to catch blue whiting in the Faroese waters at the beginning of this year. We will expect that it might take some time until the issues are resolved between Iceland and the Faroe Islands and could have negative impact on companies in the pelagic sector.

The Seafood Intelligence team will continue to follow these negotiations on markofish.com. For further information contact us at info@markofish.com.