Fish Update Briefing, Friday, January 25

SEAFOOD BOOM PROMPTS OSLO BID
NORWAY’S strength in seafood and energy has partly prompted a $729 million bid for the Oslo Stock Exchange by Euronext, which already runs stock exchanges in a number of other European cities, including Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam. Oslo also has its own dedicated seafood index, which includes most of the big salmon farming companies and has performed spectacularly well during the past year. Euronext, which already has a small holding in the Oslo Bourse, stressed that this was not a hostile bid.
ICELAND FISHING DIRECTORATE UNDER FIRE
ICELAND’S Directorate of Fisheries has been criticised by the country’s National Audit Office for lack of effectiveness over monitoring discards. It described the directorate as being weak and disorganised with no clear targets when it came to marking out progress. The report has recommended that there should be increased co-operation with the Coastguard Service, and it has also called for more observers to be placed on board fishing vessels to explore further technical options for the effective monitoring of catches.
HUNDREDS ATTEND LOST FISHERMEN’S SERVICE
A MEMORIAL service for the 6,000 Hull trawlermen lost at sea over the past 100 years and more has been held on the Humber. Hundreds of family and friends from the city’s fishing community attended the event at the St Andrews Quay retail park. The annual service, now in its 30th year, is organised by the STAND fishing heritage charity and aims to maintain Hull\’s fishing port heritage. Ron Wilkinson, STAND chairman, said: ‘It\’s important that children realise that their grandfathers and great-grandfathers were involved in what was once the biggest deep sea fishing fleet in the world. You have memories of these people who you worked with, sailed with and socialised with, they were good, hard working people.’
‘BATTERED WIFE’ FISH SHOP TO CLOSE
THE owner of an Australian fish and chip shop who called her premises The Battered Wife has been forced to close because she said she has been subjected to an abusive witch hunt. Carolyn Kerr, a former policewoman renamed the shop, in the town of Innisfail in Queensland last year, saying she wanted to raise awareness about family violence and that she too had been a victim. But the decision drew criticism from politicians and women’s groups, who claimed that it trivialised abuse. The decision to close, she said, had been taken because she could not afford the cost of an industry audit which had been promoted by an anonymous complaint about staff wages.