Kristjansson, who also calls Iceland’s fisheries policy protectionist, says it’s not just Iceland doing things wrong – around the world, commonly accepted fisheries management tools have failed to rebuild stocks.
“It’s not fishermen that manage fisheries – it’s fish. Policy has been to protect small fish and then spawning fish,” he said. “It’s an unbroken rule: when you start to manage a stock, then it declines.”
Kristjansson notes abundance or lack of food in the ocean is a vitally important and largely ignored factor, as is the interplay between species that predate on each other.
