Greenlanders Worry As Shrimp Catch Begins To Slip - AFP

[hatrack]

Dwindling shrimp stocks off Greenland's coast have local fishermen and authorities fretting that one of the island's main sources of income, known here as "pink gold", could soon vanish.
"We must sound the alarm bells because it would be a catastrophe for the island's economy if the shrimp were to disappear," Helle Siegstad, a biologist who heads up the research department at Greenland's Institute of Natural Resources (INR), told AFP.

Although Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, has been attempting to diversify its economy to include more income from tourism and mining, fishing still accounts for nearly 90 percent of all its exports, and shrimp make up more than 50 percent of those sales, according to the local statistics agency. "It would have serious consequences for Greenland's economy if the stocks disappear, since we have virtually nothing to replace them," Siegstad said.

In Ilulissat, in the west of the icy island, fishermen say they are having a harder time filling their shrimp nets and are being forced farther and farther from the coast to find the valuable crustaceans. "We weren't able to fill our quota last year," one fisherman lamented to AFP.

Royal Greenland, the world's leading provider of cold-water shrimp, confirmed that its shrimp boats were reporting shrinking stocks, while Greenland's main employer's association said fishermen were complaining of soaring fuel costs as they were forced to stay out longer to catch the same amount of shrimp.

But while everyone seems to be in agreement that there are fewer shrimp, with INR figures showing a drop from 150,536 tonnes caught in 2005 to 139,500 tonnes last year, it is unclear what is causing the decline.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Greenland_economy_shudders_as_shrimp_stocks_shrink_999.html