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  • Home
  • About distant fishing
    • Key facts
    • Types of fish
    • History of distant water fishing
    • The quota system
    • Qs&As
  • Kirkella trawler
  • Fish & chips
  • UK Fisheries Ltd
  • Media centre
UK’s distant waters fishing fleet

Key facts about northern Atlantic fishing

The north Atlantic, and in particular the waters around Norway and Greenland, has a plentiful stock of cod and haddock for the UK’s fish & chip shops.

  1. The UK imports most of the fish it eats and exports most of what it catches;

  2. Cod and haddock are UK consumers' favourite fish;

  3. These fish are found in large quantities in the distant waters north of the UK;

  4.  To provide British fish for our fish & chip shops, the UK’s trawler Kirkella needs access to quotas from Norway, Svalbard, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and NAFO (Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization);

  5. If these quotas are unavailable, the UK will have to import even more of its cod and haddock from Norway and elsewhere. 

Northern waters used by the UK's distant fishing fleet

 

Cod quotas

2025

Country Tonnes
Barents Sea 340,000
Greenland 35,000
Iceland 211,137
North Sea 19,910
Norwegian sector of Barents Sea 163,436

 

Cod and haddock are the UK’s favourite fish, but we don’t have anywhere near enough to satisfy demand and have always imported more that we have caught via a series of negotiations with Norway, Iceland the Faroes, and Greenland.


The UK distant waters fishing fleet goes outside UK waters to catch cod and haddock because there's not enough in our waters to supply our fish and chip shops. It is a case of us catching those fish in distant waters or importing the fish from other countries.

For 2025 the UK has been allocated only 1,000 tonnes of cod in Norwegian waters and 3,075 tonnes around Svalbard. The total available cod in Arctic waters for 2025 is 4,075 tonnes compared with a total of 19,500 in 2018.

Social media

@ukfisheriesltd @ukfisheriesltd kirkella

UK Fisheries works closely with the NFFO, National Federation of Fishermen's Organisations, and is a member of the Fish Producers' Organisation.

UK Fisheries Ltd owns Marr Management Ltd which operates the freezer trawler Kirkella and the fresh fish trawler Farnella.

UK Fisheries Ltd, The Orangery, Hesslewood Country Business Park, Ferriby Road, Hessle, East Yorkshire HU13 0LH

01482 307 503

info@ukfisheries.net

For more information on the Britain's distant fishing fleet www.greatbritishfish.com

 

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