Despite a volatile legal environment, key parts of the commercial fishing fleets of the Faroe Islands have undergone vital renewal in the last few years, with more underway; now some brace for rough seas with seriously lowered catch quotas.
With a good number of fishing vessels on a roll last year amid rising market prices, vessel owners of the Faroe Islands are now faced with some substantial reductions in catch quotas. As concerning as that may be—and it is, at least for some—yet another, more systemic issue is looming, one that implies a greater sense of unpredictability: chronic lack of political and legal stability.
According to Stefan í Skorini, managing director of the Faroese Vessel Owners’ Association, hundreds of pieces of legislation have been drafted since 2017, all with the potential to impact the legal environment governing the activities of fishing vessels. And the main legal framework for commercial fishing has been overhauled two times in just a decade.
The problem came to the fore about ten years ago when the need to renew much of the fishing fleets started to become obvious, presenting a dilemma for vessel owners: option one, invest now with potential longterm gain as best outcome, but with a high-risk corollary threatening great losses as worst case scenario; or option two, hold on, avoid the risk and the added uncertainty—with the certain outcome that things will only get worse over time, in line with the notoriously rising cost of maintaining aging, worn-out vessels. Many of the leading vessel owners chose to invest rather than wait, resulting in a renewal of almost all of the distant water fleet of freezer trawlers and some of the pelagic vessels.
“We’ve had investments in fleet renewals of about 3 billion dkk [400 million eur] in the last few years,” Mr. í Skorini said. “These have had a positive impact on several accounts—boosting product quality; securing full utilization of the catch; optimizing energy use; lowering emissions; and improving crew comfort. All of the above tend to improve the results and help secure a sensible running of the fishing operation. But again, the political-legal risks were high and remain so.”
The investments have made good sense, at least up until this point. The domestic fleets of longliners and fresh fish trawlers, largely in deep trouble not many years ago, have seen optimism return amid upward movement in fish prices and stable quota rights.
For the longliners, a game changer, enhanced by rising cod prices, turned out to be the replacement of aging fresh fish longliners with a new fleet of freezer longliners. As for the fresh fish trawlers, important fleet renewals are taking place this year alongside major refits made in 2025. Prospects looked upbeat for the saithe business in 2025, notably, as market prices had finally increased; but from one year to another, the catch of saithe is still very uncertain.
“The vessels may continue to fetch good prices throughout this year [2026], although some serious reductions in catch quotas have been incurred on cod, mackerel and blue whiting. In some cases price fluctuations have offset the decrease in supply, however there is no straightforward equation because this is a complex business—as ever, the supply of wild caught fish is subject to extreme levels of uncertainty.”
The fishing business generates a great deal of tax revenue, appreciated for its benefit on public services yet also at times fueling debate over the right level of taxation.
For the Vessel Owners’ Association, however, a higher degree of political and legal stability remains at the top of the list of priorities.
“We hope all our lawmakers realize the necessity of handling legislation and regulation with the level of moderation, respect and responsibility that is only reasonable to expect,” Mr. í Skorini said. “Everyone should know that stability remains key to success in all business, and that it begins with political and legal stability. And we must keep in mind that we are a very small nation with an economy that is still highly dependent on commercial fisheries.”
Aside from appealing to politicians to tread carefully when implementing changes to basic rules, Mr. í Skorini also had a word of caution on the issue of growing resource taxation on fishing.
“A substantial part of government revenues in the Faroe Islands is directly sourced from the fishing fleets. These include corporate income tax, resource tax, wage taxes, and dividend taxes. Vessel owners paid 500 to 550 million dkk [67M to 74M eur] in resource tax alone in 2025, which is approximately a five-fold increase since 2015.”
“In short,” he added, “these are two main concerns of the day: first, lawmakers constantly looking to change the legislation governing commercial fishing, and second, a trend toward increasing the resource tax. Vessel owners want to pay their fair share; but for longterm viability, we need political-legal stability.”
