In the early 1990s, Greenland’s coldwater shrimp (Pandalus borealis) fishery successfully dodged a potential economic disaster brought by an overinvestment in the trawler fleet, but there are mounting concerns that a new fisheries bill could destabilize the sector once more, delegates heard at the World Seafood Congress 2017 (WSC) in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Peder Munk Pedersen, sustainability officer at Polar Seafood Greenland, said that the 1990 fisheries act that introduced an individually transferrable quota (ITQ) system saved the Greenlandic economy, but also led to a concentration of the quotas on very few hands. Now the government is promoting a new fisheries act, aiming at a return to the old system where quotas are distributed on an annual basis.
Greenland’s fleet in 1990 comprised 52 offshore vessels and 201 coastal vessels; today it is down to six offshore vessels and 22 coastal vessels.
“That was quite a dramatic reduction. It was a bitter pill for many companies to swallow, but at least the industry learned that this reduction, with the industry left in very few hands, was the price that had to be paid for a financially healthy fishing industry.”
Pedersen said there are “suggestions” that the new bill, coming this fall for proposed implementation in spring 2018, could undo the stability of the sector.
It could hinder investment in the fishery, not to mention create compensatory issues for those companies that have invested heavily in quota purchases, he said.
Greenland’s total allowable catch of coldwater shrimp for 2017 is 90,000 metric tons (MT), which puts it at the front of the industry. Overall, this year’s global catch is estimated at 225,000 MT, which is 125,000 MT less than in 2011, with Pedersen attributing a large part of the decline to the huge decrease in Canada’s quota in recent years.
The export value achieved by Greenland shrimp in 2017 is estimated at more than DKK 1.5 billion (USD 239.7 million, EUR 201.6 million), with shell-on products accounting for DKK 879 million (USD 140.5 million, EUR 118.1 million) and cooked and peeled shrimp at DKK 663 million (USD 105.9 million, EUR 89.1 million).
Around 53 percent of its shell-on shrimp goes to Europe, 30 percent to Asia and 16 percent to Russia.
Asia, and China in particular, is proving “a very fine” market for Greenland’s shrimp, said Pedersen.
In Europe the main end market continues to be the United Kingdom.
“There are little challenges connected to Brexit and the devaluing of the pound, but I think we can manage,” he said.
