Tag Archives: World’s Supply of Mackerel

The World’s Supply of Mackerel Is on the Move

The Northeast Atlantic mackerel is a small fish with grey or greenish-blue scales and tigerlike black stripes from mouth to tail. Lacking a swim bladder, the gas-filled organ that helps most fish move up and down in the water, the mackerel would sink and die if it ever stopped. So it is always on the move, looking for plankton, crustaceans, and other small fish.  In recent years, the mackerel’s unceasing motion and radically increased abundance have taken it farther north, to Greenland or Svalbard, which lies between Norway and the North Pole, and northwest, to Icelandic waters. And when the fish turned up, the Icelanders took advantage. By tradition, their nation had no claim to this fish, but starting in the mid-2000s, when the lucrative fish arrived in great numbers, they struck. >click to read< 11:09