The news has just been confirmed by the Icelandic Fisheries Minister Einar K. Gudfinnsson and has caused dismay in the industry. But the bad news for processors on the Humber and in Scotland is that quota for haddock and some other species could be reduced. Both these UK regions are major users of haddock from Iceland for retail fish products. According the Icelandreview.com website in Reykjavik today, fishermen said the coming year is going to be difficult. The UK fish trade believes it could also lead to higher cod and haddock prices in the Britain and Europe generally.

Fridrik J. Arngrímsson, managing director of the Federation of Icelandic Fishing Vessel Owners (LÍÚ), told the newspaper Morgunbladid. "It is evident that it will be a difficult year for many with such little cod." Last year, a drastic cut to the cod fishing quota down 60,000 tonnes from 190,000 tonnes, led to factory closures and many redundancies in the trade.

LÍÚ believes strongly that the cod quota should have been higher. Mr Arngrímsson said. "It is too low considering the earnings of individuals and companies when no risk had been taken with a quota of 150,000 to 160,000 tons,"

Meanwhile, Arnar Sigmundsson, chairman of the Association of Fish Processing Plants, agreed, saying: "We have the opinion that the cut to the cod quota last year had been too high and emphasized that opinion now so we thought it would be natural that the quota would be higher [this year]."

Saevar Gunnarsson, chairman of the Association of Fishermen, is pessimistic, says Icelandreview.com . "This will be a horrible year. We anticipate a vast recession in the earnings of fishermen and fishing companies. There is nothing positive about it."

The quota cut issued by the Ministry of Fisheries is however not as drastic as the Icelandic Marine Research Industry had recommended. The Marine Research Institute proposed a cod quota of 124,000 tons, but Minister Gudfinnsson decided to keep the promise he made last year, that the cod fishing quota will not be lower than 130,000 tons.

Iceland's Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde said the government backs his minister's decision. "I made the decision to take advantage of the strong position of stocks where circumstances allowed," Mr Gudfinnssson added: "A high haddock quota helped fishing companies steer through a period of difficulties caused by last year's cut."

The Glitnir Bank's specialist fish department said last night that many fishing companies can be expected to have difficulty achieving the catch mix implied by the quota decision. 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.

Last year, fishing companies were able to transfer part of that quota between years. They will now not be able to transfer as much between years and the by-catch problem could therefore be expected to rise.

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