More Atlantic haddock is being made available to the market this year thanks to substantial increases in both the Barents Sea and Icelandic quotas this year, reversing recent declining supply trends in both fisheries.
For the 2015/2016 quota year, Icelandic fishermen are permitted to catch 40,000 metric tons (MT) of haddock, up almost 10,000 MT on the previous season. Indeed, according to government statistics, the country has landed 41,735 MT of haddock in the past 12 months (May 2015-April 2016), up 19 percent year-on-year.
In total, Iceland’s demersal catch grew 6 percent in this period to 450,586 MT, with cod accounting for 253,789 MT of the total, also up 6 percent year-on-year.
Meanwhile, the joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission set the Barents Sea haddock quota for 2016 some 21,000 MT higher than the previous year at 244,000 MT. This total allowable catch (TAC) is more than 65,000 MT higher than just two years ago. Of this year’s haddock TAC, Norway’s share is 118,700 MT and Russia has 125,300 MT.
There’s also more haddock coming out of the North Sea this year, with the shared EU-Norway North Sea TAC for the species increased to 61,933 MT.
It should also be noted that thanks to considerable conservation efforts by the fishing industry and other stakeholders, this year’s cod TAC has also been scaled up to 33,651 MT with the stock rebounding to a level of around 149,000 MT last year, after plummeting to just 44,000 MT 10 years ago. With the populations expected to continue to rise, the fishery is being prepared for assessment against the Marine Steward Council (MSC) standard, leading to certification within the next 18 months.
From a global perspective, the total supply of Atlantic haddock will increase from 342,000 MT last year to 366,000 MT in 2016, according to the latest estimates from the Groundfish Forum. At the same time, the cod supply will increase by 5,000 MT to 1,297,000 MT this year.
