FISHING LIMITS ICELAND IS PUSHING CLAIM TO 50 MILES FROM SHORELINE

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32701, 2 September 1971, Page 12

FISHING LIMITS ICELAND IS PUSHING CLAIM TO 50 MILES FROM SHORELINE

I By

KEN GOFTON.

in the "Financial Times" London)

< Reprinted by arrangement)

The British Government must be heartily sick of fish. The entanglement over the inshore fishing industry is one of the last problems to be solved before Britain can go sailing off to join the Common Market. Now. looming out of the fog, comes another hazard—lceland’s threat to extend its fishing limits from 12 miles to 50 miles or more, a move which would have very serious implications for Britain’s distant-water fleet.

Iceland’s last, and ultimately successful, attempt to extend its fishing . limits—from six to 12 miles—led to the famous “cod war" of the late 19505, when for three years the British fleet fishea with gunboat escorts. Of the settlement of that dispute in

trie early part of 1961, the; “Financial Times” reported: “While not abandoning her claim to exclusive fishing rights in the whole sea area covering her continental shelf, Iceland undertakes to give six months notice of any prop-)-) sals to extend fishing limits., and any dispute arising from such a claim can at the re-1 quest of either side be submitted to the International Court of Justice.” Ambitious move What we are seeing now,| exactly 10 years later, is the revival of the Icelanders’ claim to the exclusive use of their Continental shelf waters, which extend 50 to 70 miles! around the shoreline. This is) a much more ambitious move than the last—and much more serious, for several reasons. The first point is that almost all the fisn we eat—cod, haddock, halibut, plaice —are bottom-feeding species which live in the shallow water where their food is. In deeper waters the fish are rarely found, and anyway, it is claimed, no economic technique exists for catching them. Thus, while the last agreement reserved the richest grounds for the Icelandic fleet, the new move, if it becomes effective, will exclude foreign vessels almost entirely. There are places where the Continental shelf extends beyond 50 miles, but the greater part falls inside that distance.

Second, the British dis-tant-water fleet has continued to fish very successfully in the waters around Iceland outside the 12-mile limit Over 40 per cent of its catch, equivalent to about a fifth of all the white fish landed here, comes from that region. There are a number of reasons for that. Partly it is tradition—the charts of Icelandic waters are scattered with British names like Whaleback, Workingman’s Bank, Boxing Gloves, and North Cape. Tra-

dition is important to fishing vessel skippers, who have so much at stake that they tend to return time and again to the waters they know.. For “some of the smaller vessels, the 139-footers, Iceland is i about the limit in terms of [distance and the sort of coneditions they can face. Consistent catches By reputation, also, Ice-) landic catches are fairly consistent, without the giddy. | peaks and the desperate) J shortfalls of some of the) [other grounds. As a result.) “because of the weather or the) presence of the fish, almost all’ iof the British distant-water | “vessels fish off Iceland at one [ time or another. Mr Kevin [ [ McNamara, M.P. for King-j ston-upon-Hull North, said in; a House of Commons debate | [ last month that a quarter of) ) the Hull catch, 41 per cent) ! of the Grimsby catch, and 62 i I per cent of the Fleetwood ( catch (traditionally an “Ice , land” port) came from Ice- ! landic waters last year. The ' British, followed by the ) Germans, are the main ! “foreigners” fishing in the region. It is true, of course, that a [ large part of the British fleet ) could fish further afield, with ;an inevitable addition to ) costs. However, a cause of I great anxiety to the leaders Jof the British industry is I what might well be called ' the "domino theory,” a term more frequently used in con- ) nection with South-East Asian politics, but equally appropriate here. What worries them is that Iceland ’ pioneered the way for other ’ countries when in the 1950 s 1 it took a unilateral decision I to extend its fishing limits to 12 miles.

This led ultimately to the 1964 West European Fisheries Convention, when a 12-mile limit became accepted as the norm, with some provision for foreign vessels to fish in the six- to 12-mile belt where they had traditional rights. It is felt now that if Iceland establishes a case for a 50mile limit, it will be followed very quickly by others, the most likely candidates being Greenland, the Faroes and Norway. Icelanders’ motives What, then, are the motives of the Icelanders? In particular, as their ambition in this field has been known since at least 1948, why should they choose this moment to seek to put it into practice? To some extent the answer must be conjectural, but several factors are involved. A rather soured comment from one spokesman in the British industry was that it boiled down to nationalism, and fish—accounting for 90 per cent of the country’s exports—was all that Iceland had to be nationalistic about.

However, in London, Iceland’s Foreign Minister stressed that conservation was a main plank of his country’s case. This may startle the industry. The general feeling is that the Icelandic shoals have not been endangered in any way: Mr Austen Laing, directorgeneral of the British Trawlers’ Federation, comments: "There has never been any Question of having done damage to the stocks by excessive fishing. In any case, we have said for many years that we are ready to talk to them about more effective preservation or quotas.” Nothing, however, is straightforward in this industry. Excessive fishing has more than one definition. It can only mean that the future of the stock is endangered because not enough young fish reach maturity to support it, or it can mean simply fishing to the point of diminishing returns. Taking the argument further, there has been a major switch in Icelandic fishing tactics. The Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development Review of Fisheries for 1970 shows a sharp increase in landings of cod, up from 235,000 tons in 1968 to 307,000 tons last year (coinciding with high prices in the U.S.), and a matching drop in catches of herring (down from 143,000 tons to 46,000 tons over the same period). Clearly, then, the Icelandic industry is taking a closer interest in the future of its cod. The Icelanders point out that catches of haddock by Iceland, Britain, Germany. France. Belgium and Russia have dropped from 110,000 tons in 1961 to 46,600 tons in 1963, and the cod stock shows more serious signs of depletion. About 55-60 per cent of all spawning cod is now caught annually, thus dooming the stock to total eradication if the present trend continues. These are figures which are likely to be disputed by British fisheries scientists, but the Icelanders, who

account for about half of the cod catch, clearly feel that ,if they chased the foreign j boats off the shelf there would be no problem at all. Reasons for haste

Urgency has been introduced into the argument on two counts. First, the Icelanders are aware of what has been happening in other parts of the North Atlantic. In particular, much of the international fishing effort of the last three years or so has been centred in the North-East Atlantic, in the Barents Sea area, where there has been a bonanza. The level of catches has held up remarkably well, but is showing distinct signs of [tailing away, and the fleets are beginning to drift back ito Icelandic waters. If overI fishing is a genuine problem, [this can only make it worse.

Second, a United Nations conference on the laws of the sea is scheduled to take place in Geneva in 1973. Already the preliminary meetings for this conference, at which national delegations (are putting forward their [negotiating positions, are ‘taking place—and at one such meeting Britain strongly [criticised the Icelandic policy. It might be argued that Iceland’s case could happily be sorted out in 1973,'but the Government in Reykjavik does not see it that way. “In the first place,” Mr Agustsson said in London, "no-one at this stage can forecast when the conference will be held. Conferences have been cancelled before now. Second, we feel that the preservation question cannot wait any longer. Third, when we acted in 1958 we were then also asked to delay and wait for a conference. That conference was held in 1960 and no conclusion was reached: we fear that the same will happen again. The big countries, the United States, Britain and Russia, seem to go for a 12-mile limit. We do not feel that this is enough for Iceland.” British objections Meanwhile the British Government has made known the coolness with which it regards Iceland’s bid to extend its fishing limits. In mid-July the British Ambassador in Reykjavik delivered an aide-memoire to the Icelandic Foreign Ministry, regretting that the Icelandic Government had announced its policy without consultation, and reserving Britain’s rights under the 1961 agreement to take any dispute to the International Court of Justice. Then in the House of Commons on July 20, Mr Anthony Royle, the Undersecretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, made clear that the Government did not accept that conservation was an argument for extending fishery limits, “believing that when conservation measures are needed they should be taken by international agreement,” He went on to say that as recently as last May, on the basis of the latest scientific information available, the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission had concluded that no further conservation measures were necessary in Icelandic waters.

The one hopeful sign is that Mr Agustsson has come - in the belief that there is room for negotiation. One possibility may be the introduction of quotas or a licensing system. If the two Governments cannot find common ground, however, it looks as though we face a lengthy case in the International Court of Justice, and presumably, a return to gunboat protection for the fishing fleet.

How Britain's “distantwater” fishing industry lj will be affected if Iceland [ succeeds in extending its I fishing limits is described in this article.