Sustainable waters - Iceland leads way

Iceland may be one of the world’s smallest countries by population. But when it comes to the management and sustainability of its ocean resources, the nation is a global leader.

An early adopter of fish quotas—based on extensive research of fish stocks, the marine ecosystem and biodiversity — Iceland’s responsible fisheries program is now a model for other countries.

EURObiZ Japan interviews Eythor Eyjolfsson, CEO of Icelandic Japan.

Can you give us some background on your company?

It was founded in 1942; and in those days it was owned by Icelandic Seafood companies, or as we called them in those days: ‘Icelandic freezing plants’. And there were basically two firms, this one — SH, as it was called in those days — and another were the only two which exported fish from Iceland. We have a very long, strong presence in the UK and the [United] States, and this office was opened 25 years ago. We’d been exporting fish to Japan for many years prior to that.

In general, where does Japan rank overall in fish imports from Iceland?

Today, the EU is by far the largest market, followed by the United States and Japan. Japan would be probably in 3rd or 4th place. China is becoming a very large market. Until now, we basically only did secondary processing in China for re-export to Europe. But for the past two years, we’ve been seeing more and more expensive products going into mainland China. This office is responsible for China and Asia. Our company has a turnover of $130 million a year. That’s Japan and China.

Iceland is unique in the way that it established quotas for fish. Tell us how that works and why your program is special? It comes from the urge and the need to maintain and manage the sustainability of the stocks. So Iceland [together with Holland] was one of the first countries in the ’70s to introduce the quota system. The quota is based on fish stocks and an assessment made by Icelandic authorities, research institutes, and in cooperation with the FAO [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations] that assesses the size of the stocks. We then distribute the quota to fishing companies, down to each vessel. When the vessels go out fishing, they have a ’catch look’, which means that they have a surveyor on board and they have to [report] precisely where they are catching fish, what time they catch it, how much they catch; and this is then verified when they come to shore or when they land the product. So you will know the sizes of the fish. So there’s a constant monitoring; and if there are changes, then adjustments are made. For the past 10 or 20 years there have been dramatic reductions in quota. Especially in the cod quota.

And why is that?

Researchers were afraid that their stock was being overfished. The other change we have been seeing — especially in cod stocks — has been a recovery. But of late, probably because of the increase in temperature of the oceans, we are seeing more and more southern species coming up to the shores of Iceland.

So the entire program is about sustainability?

Sustainability and traceability are very important for us. We have fishing processing plants in the UK and in Europe that we can show to the producers that we have sustainable [catches]. We can trace it to the vessels and down to the day it was caught.

And you really had no choice, did you? If you didn’t do this as a country, as a society, your fish stocks would be gone.

Well, actually, we fought three wars with Britain — the cod wars — because they came up to our waters and were depleting them, together with the Dutch of course. We expanded the mileage around the country, the fishing zone, three times. And the only reason was because of overfishing by others.

So was the quota system brought in initially to protect your stocks from other countries?

I think there were three reasons. First of all, we extended the zone in order to protect our most valuable resource, which at that time was fish. Secondly, it was obvious that cod was being overfished, and that of course urged the need to go [away] from this “Olympic fishing” — where you go out and you fish as much as you can. And thirdly, having introduced the quota system, companies started to consolidate, and it became much more efficient because it just completely changed the industry. So it was industrialisation that needed to take place. Many other nations have followed in the wake, and they have introduced this [type of program].

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