Earlier this autumn a fisheries conference was held at the Sjöhistoriska Maritime Museum in Stockholm in connection with my photo exhibition “Ocean Fishing — Six Trips on the North Atlantic”. The central theme of the conference dealt with how to develop sustainable fisheries management in the Nordic countries and among the invited speakers were Ásmundur Guðjónsson, representative from the Nordic Council in Copenhagen, stated in his presentation that there is no common management policy in the Nordic countries — but 8 different ones.
I had the opportunity to meet Dr Menakhem Bem-Yami and his lovely wife Hannah this year in Haifa. He did a great contribution in “Images” with the treatise “Making sense of sustainable fisheries management”. To make a long story short — after a lifetime of experience as a fisherman, then master mariner and later technical and management adviser at FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), to name some — he advocates a change towards a more diversified kind of fisheries management. In addition, his sharp analysis in “Images” goes beyond the question of why and how management problems arise, it also points out some environmental factors to be considered in the debate and relates advantages and disadvantages with different management systems, especially the Faroese days at sea management.
