Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.10.2014, Blaðsíða 20

Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.10.2014, Blaðsíða 20
equation, everything becomes more volatile. Elís Pétur Elísson is a fisher- man and community activist who lives in Breiðdalsvík, a village to the north- east of Djúpivogur on the Ring Road. According to his account, there were around 1,500 tons of fishing quota lo- cated in Breiðdalsvík as recently as 1996. Vísir bought the majority share in the company that owned this quota in 1998, however, and relocated it to Djúpiv- ogur, effectively draining Breiðdalsvík not only of its fish- ing industry, but of its very ability to support a fishing industry. The ramifications for the village were severe: the local fish factory closed, the economy suffered and the population shrank. Today Elís Pétur sees the same cycle about to repeat itself in Djúpiv- ogur. “In recent years Vísir has been buying up smaller fishing companies throughout the country,” he said. “And now they’re taking the quota, which is the main source of income for these villages, and leaving for Grindavík.” To add insult to Breiðdalsvík’s his- torical injury, there are plans afoot to possibly compensate Djúpivogur for the quota Vísir is moving back west— to the tune of 400 tons for three years. This irks Elís Pétur not only because Breiðdalsvík was left empty-hand- ed by the government back in 1998, but primarily because the quota for which Djúpivogur would be compen- sated wasn’t all originally located in Djúpivogur: just under half of it, by his count, actually belonged to boats in Breiðdalsvík. “If the government does distribute quota to compensate Djúpivogur, I just hope it’s spread around,” he said. Recently, Elís Pétur and a few oth- er fishermen in Breiðdalsvík started working together and pooling the profits earned by fishing their small individual quotas. They used the mon- ey to open a new fish factory in the village, which is owned collectively by the people of Breiðdalsvík. Instead of selling their catch to other factories, these fishermen are trying to process it themselves. “That way we keep the income and the jobs in Breiðdalsvík,” Elís Pétur said. The group has sought government support to help make the factory more stable and to employ more people, but according to Elís Pétur the authorities have been tight-fisted. He doesn’t know for sure why they were unsuccessful in their petitions, but he has a hunch. “It’s all politi- cal,” he said. “I think it’s mostly because we’re not friends with people in high places.” As to the quota system itself, Elís Pé- tur is at once prag- matic and highly criti- cal. Like many other small-scale fishermen, he sees some form of quota as a neces- sary means for regulating the amount of fish—something long thought of as the common property of all Iceland- ers—that are taken from the sea. In 1990, however, revisions to the law made quota a commodity that could be bought and sold on a free market. At this point it began concentrating in the hands of a smaller and smaller number of fishing companies mostly headquartered in Reykjavík, morph- ing the fishing industry into what Elís considers essentially a mafia. “The few companies that own the quota can buy out anyone they don’t want in the industry,” he said. “They can gamble with it. They can go to the bank and take a huge loan, and the loan is sup- ported by quota that they own.” The way to fix the quota system, according to Elís Pétur, is to tie fish- ing quota to a particular geographic location. “If the government is going to take care of these different villages, they have to support the villages,” he said. “That means some of the income has to come from the quota being left in the villages, not only with these big companies in the Reykjavík area.” Gauti echoed this opinion when discussing the plight of Djúpivogur. “I think there is a consensus in the country that we want to maintain the smaller fishing villages and the people living there,” he said. “The easiest way to do that is to make sure people can do what they’ve been doing throughout the years: fishing. It’s a political deci- sion that has to be made.” On the question of whether Djúpiv- ogur might eventually suffer the same fate as Breiðdalsvík, Gauti grew sol- emn. “I would never dare to think like that,” he said. “I’m not going down that road. It’s that simple.” Combining forces One of the most important issues raised by Vísir’s withdrawal from its factories in Þingeyri, Húsavík and Djúpivogur is the distance to which Icelandic politicians and the public are willing to go to preserve smaller fishing villages. Gauti and Elís Pétur both support the idea of tying quota to particular fishing villages, so it can’t be sold to a new company on the other end of the country—or even, presum- ably, on the other end of a fjord. Elís Pétur goes even further in his recom- mendations, advocating for a partial nationalization of quota. “A large part of the entire quota each year could be owned and rented out by the govern- ment, instead of rented out by rich people in Reykjavik,” he says. “It’s cra- zy how much money these companies are making just by renting out quota and not fishing themselves.” These ideas might indeed provide some relief to residents of smaller fishing villages, but if the price of this relief is forced inefficiency in the fishing industry, it could prove to be a Faustian bargain. Pétur sees techni- cal progress behind all the strain be- ing put on villages like Djúpivogur and Breiðdalsvík, especially when they find themselves in too close proxim- ity—and therefore competition—with each other. “With all the advanced modern equipment used to process fish, you only need twenty or thirty people today to do the things that used to take many more people,” he said. “So it has nothing to do with the quota system. It’s just the technology.” Gauti was of a different mind about what role the quota system, particu- larly the geographically unspecified nature of fishing quota, played in the plight of his village. “What the quota system does is make the villages very vulnerable,” he said. “We’re a vil- lage where the number of inhabitants has been growing. We have all these children, we have the school which is getting bigger and bigger. And up un- til this all happened, we did not look at ourselves as a vulnerable village at all.” Though stopgaps might be found in tourism or fish farming or any number of other sectors, Gauti maintained that the easiest, simplest and most effec- tive solution for Djúpivogur’s economy was also the most traditional. There is plenty of room for development in the fishing industry, he said, but this de- velopment has to happen where the boats dock and where the fish fac- tories are located. “We are, first and foremost, a fishing village,” he said. “We have been a fishing village for hundreds of years, and until otherwise proven I like to think we will be a fish- ing village into the future.” 20 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 16 — 2014 TVEIR HRAFNAR listhús, Art Gallery Baldursgata 12 101 Reykjavík (at the corner of Baldursgata and Nönnugata, facing Þrír Frakkar Restaurant) Phone: +354 552 8822 +354 863 6860 +354 863 6885 art@tveirhrafnar.is www.tveirhrafnar.is Opening hours: Thu-Fri 12pm - 5pm, Sat 1pm - 4pm and by appointment +354 863 6860 TVEIR HRAFNAR listhús, Art Gallery offers a range of artwork by contemporary Icelandic artists represented by the gallery, selected works by acclaimed artists and past Icelandic masters. Hallgrímur Helgason Húbert Nói Jóhannesson Jón Óskar Óli G. Jóhannsson Ragnar Þórisson Steinunn Þórarinsdóttir Also works by: Guðbjörg Lind Jónsdóttir Hulda Hákon Sara Oskarsson Kristján Davíðsson Nína Tryggvadóttir – among others “I think there is a consensus in the country that we want to maintain the smaller fishing villages and the people living there.”
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