Norway sets its own quota on mackerel stock in the absence of agreement between coastal states

Norway has now set a national mackerel quota for this year at 278,222 metric tons, a decrease of around 7 percent compared with last year. This was done in absence of a coastal state agreement with the United Kingdom, the EU, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries announces.

“It is unfortunate that the coastal states have not yet agreed on an agreement on the distribution of the mackerel stock”, says Norway's Minister of Fisheries and Ocean Policy Bjørnar Skjæran (Labor).

This year's total quota is 794,920 metric tons. The Norwegian quota makes up 35 per cent of this.

In recent years, increased sea temperatures have led to mackerel swimming further north, with the result that it is now found west of Greenland in the Norwegian Sea and off Svalbard in the Barents Sea. Its north-eastern migration means that there is now more mackerel in Norwegian waters than when the previous mackerel agreement was entered into in 2014.

The background for the current situation is that the EU and the UK would not continue the agreement from 2014 after Brexit. Negotiations between the coastal states will, however, continue this autumn to reach a solution for the coming years.