The NMTT coordinates the project which is financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers. Researchers from Greenland, Faroe Islands, Iceland, Norway and Denmark take part in the project.

Overall objectives of the work

The work seeks to map out the fisher payment/salary systems in use in fisheries in Denmark, Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland and Norway, to collect and analyse pay evolution through time series, and to examine the existence and distribution of resource rent among fisher group participants i.e. fishing quota owners, vessel owners and fishermen hired on board fishing operations. 

A distinction should be made between the different participating categories of fishers as deckhands/labour as well as employed skippers vs. owners of vessels and owners of quotas. Each of these distinct groups of fishing participants will face different motivation for pay, rent seeking, subsidisation, etc. The work to be undertaken will seek to categorise these different groups, describe how they operate and get paid, and discuss how these different groups are motivated. 

For fisheries policy makers the interest in such work rest in a better appreciation of 1) how the pay between the different fisher groups participating in fishing operations have evolved over the past couple of decades to track influences from changing fisheries management system, 2) to gain a better insight and understanding of incentive structure or motivation of fisheries participant groups and 3) to better appreciate how different fisheries management systems may give rise to different outcomes across countries and across fisheries participant groups due to pay system.