Regin Winther Poulsen

Icelandic whaling firm Hvalur has announced intentions to hunt for fin whales again this summer, marking the first time since 2023 any firm from Iceland has conducted whale hunts. Hvalur, which is the only active whaling company in Iceland, faced heavy public backlash during its last whaling season in 2023. According to The Reykjavík Grapevine, an Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority (MAST) report surfaced that year that cited serious animal… Read More

In late August, Icelanders will vote on whether their government should restart negotiations on attaining E.U. membership. If the nation’s citizens vote for resuming the talks, it would mark the first time Iceland publicly revisited the issue of joining the E.U. since 2013, when talks ceased mainly due to disagreements over fisheries management. Fisheries representatives in Iceland have recently warned that many of those disagreements remain… Read More

As pelagic quotas are decreasing in the Northeast Atlantic, Bárður á Steig Nielsen, who was appointed as the new minister of fisheries in the Faroe Islands in April, wants to encourage the Faroese fishing industry to innovate, possibly by turning toward underutilized or completely new species to fill the gap. "Perhaps now, when pelagic quotas are decreasing, the industry will have time to try some new fisheries," he told SeafoodSource. ​On… Read More

In 2021, Faroe Islands-based salmon-farming firm Bakkafrost received a DKK 67 million (USD 10.5 million, EUR 9 million) fine after the Faroese Food and Veterinary Authority reported the firm to the police for several alleged animal welfare violations. Now, five years later, the company has been officially charged with only one of the less serious allegations the authority levied against it.  According to Faroese police, Bakkafrost has been… Read More

The Icelandic government is proposing a new bill that, if passed, would place the nation’s entire aquaculture sector under a unified regulatory framework. The draft of the bill working its way through Icelandic Parliament aims to lessen the environmental impacts of fish farming and support sustainable growth through such actions as encouraging closed-containment systems, stricter governmental responses to sea lice infestations and fish… Read More

Commercial fish stocks within the Faroese Plateau marine ecosystem are inching back from the brink of disaster. The Faroese Plateau is a shallow-water marine ecosystem that separates the Faroe Islands from the deeper waters of the Faroese Bank. The ecosystem is a crucial habitat for commercially important stocks like cod, haddock, pollock, and saithe, among other species. A few of those stocks – cod and pollock – have reached critically low… Read More

Four Northeast Atlantic coastal parties reached a quota-sharing deal in December 2025 for this year’s mackerel-fishing season in the region: the U.K., Norway, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland, the latter of which has been included on a mackerel quota-sharing deal for the first time. Some within Iceland have hailed the country’s first-ever inclusion in a mackerel-fishing deal as historic and a responsible action that will help ensure… Read More

A district court in Norway has ruled that the country can use its Sanctions Act to ban Russian fishing company Norebo from fishing in its waters. In July 2025, Norwegian authorities announced that Norebo and fellow Russian fishing firm Murman Seafood would be banned from Norwegian harbors and would not have their licenses to fish in Norwegian waters renewed for 2026 due to alleged espionage. In response to the sanctions, Russian authorities… Read More

The Faroe Islands recently released its annual overview of seafood exports for 2025, finding that exports of mackerel, blue whiting, cod, and haddock increased by both volume and value, while salmon exports saw value declines. In total, seafood exports from the Faroe Islands increased 8 percent by value, rising to DKK 13.4 billion (USD 2.1 billion, EUR 1.8 billion) compared to DKK 12.5 billion (USD 2 billion, EUR 1.7 billion) in the same period… Read More

After becoming the first European country to open parts of its ocean to deep-sea mining in late 2024 – a decision that drew criticism from environmental activists and scientists – Norway’s newly elected government has made a deal to postpone any such activity in the near term. Norway’s national election in September 2025 left no party with a majority, and since then, the Labor Party has continued governing the country under minority… Read More