With oil prices hurting and catches down one-tenth from 2003 levels, the Faroese fisheries retraction continued for a second straight year through 2004, following two years of all-time high yields.
Figures from Statistics Faroes, together with other information from industry sources, indicate Faroese fisheries had an overall acceptable performance in 2004, although the downturn from the previous year continued with both prices and costs going opposite and mostly unfavorable directions.
The country’s five groundfish factory trawlers, operating in distant and middle distant waters such as East of Greenland, the Barents Sea and the Irminger Sea, did well as usual. “The filleting trawlers have been a stable business for many years now,” said Árni Joensen, long time trader and former Fishing Vessels Association chairman. “My impression is 2004 was fine, too, for all of them.”
The picture looks different for the other group of factory trawlers, namely the shrimp trawlers. That fleet has shrunk in recent years by more than half and today comprises only six trawlers, most of them struggling. “Last year wasn’t much different from the year before,” said the Shrimp Trawlers chairman, Jóhan Joensen. Most of the shrimp fleet has had a hard time since the turn of the millennium, with a host of circumstances pulling to their disadvantage. These include lost fishing rights in several areas, plummeting shrimp prices and skyrocketing fuel costs. “We hope to see raised quotas East of Greenland and a new arrangement in Canada,” Mr Joensen said.
The seven Faroese purse seiners are known to have made good money in recent years, catching pelagic fish including blue whiting, mackerel and herring. “We shouldn’t complain, but 2004 turned out a little weaker than the year before,” said Atli Hansen, chairman of the Purse Seiners Industrial Association. “Not all of the fleet had a profit, and the chief reasons are increasing oil prices and decreasing prices for industrial fish. But the fleet had been doing very well in the years before so we have had huge investments—new ship construction, refurbishments, lots of new equipment—and luckily most of the ships have been readied to take advantage of hopeful good fisheries for the next 20 years or so.”
As to the smaller trawlers, longliners, gillnetters and jigging reelers, all of which operate mostly in coastal and middle distant waters, the total annual catch of 2004 was down 122,000 tonnes, a ten percent drop compared to the year before, according to information from Statistics Faroes. In landed value, the decline was even more serious: down DKK 165 (EUR 22 / USD 30) million, to approximately DKK 1 (EUR 0.134 / USD 0.180) billion.
“The fleet landed almost 12,000 tonnes less in 2004 than in 2003,” a news release from Statistics Faroes read. “In value, the decrease was approximately 165 million krones. This is the second year in a row that the total landed quantity decreased and last year the quantity equalled 2001 figures. However, the decrease in value is higher because, in addition to lesser catch, we have had descending prices of all essential fish species including cod, haddock and saithe. For this reason, the total value of landed fish has fallen back to the level of 1999.”
Since 1993, longline, otter trawl and pair trawl have on average caught around 90 percent of the harvest in the Faroese fisheries zone, both in terms of quantity and value. However, when comparing fishing gear, the longliners have had most of the progress since then. In 2004, the longliners caught one-third of the total quantity of fish landed while receiving about 40 percent of the overall value, according to Statistics Faroes.
“I won’t call the year 2004 a bad year after all,” Rolant Poulsen, chairman of the 19-member vessels Longliners Association, remarked. “But it sure wasn’t as good as 2003, and definitely nothing like 2002 and 2001; but then again those years were incredible. The prices of haddock and coley [saithe] have fallen considerably and for the best performing longliners, individual crew member salaries shrunk by as much as 300,000 krones.”
Otter trawlers, pair trawlers and smaller trawlers—in total 30 vessels—in general told a similar story, although it varies depending on the size and type of the trawler. Most of the small 20 to 55 tonnes hold capacity vessels are licensed to fish in inshore waters, focusing on flat species, usually of higher market value than demersal fish; still, these are relatively vulnerable to weather and sea conditions. For the bigger otter trawlers, the effects of higher prices of oil have been severe. “I’d say only half the vessels in this group had a profit in 2004,” the chairman of the Otter Trawlers Association, Jósup Henriksen, noted. “These trawlers landed an annual average value of somewhere between 13 and 21 million krones, which would have been fine, if it wasn’t for the cost of oil.”
The chairman of the Small Coastal Fishing Vessels’ Association, Auðunn Konradsson said the average performance of this large group of more than 200 vessels was acceptable albeit the prices of saithe and haddock made 2004 weaker than the year before. “Those who caught relatively more cod were better off than the others,” he said, referring to the high value of cod. “If you compare the fewer but bigger and fatter cod we’ve seen now, with the many but smaller and thinner cod we had a few years ago, you’ll see that we were right back then in recommending that we didn’t stop fishing because the cod were small. They were small because their food supply was low; we brought down their numbers, which left more food to those we didn’t catch—and now they look just great.”
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