LARGE OCEAN NATIONS FORUM 2018 PART 1

H.E. MR. HOGNI HOYDAL:

It’s a great honour for me as Minister of Fisheries and Deputy Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands to address this workshop today where we will focus on the challenges of large ocean nations around transnational organised fisheries Crime, and the establishment of the large ocean nations forum on transnational organised fisheries Crime. When the Minister of Seychelles came to the Faroes for a conference we organised in 2015, our conversations revealed a number of areas where we could change experiences. That realisation kickstarted a new drive in our Island orientated international engagement and cooperation. And I’m pleased to observe that over the last three years, we had a very successful program. This culminated in October last year, with the Large Oceans Nations forum at Blue Grove in Malta which I chaired. This was a very productive gathering of experts from North Atlantic countries and a number of small Island development states, including Papa New Guinea, the Seychelles and Mauritius. The forum in Malta was organised by our Nordic partners, the FAO, and the Common Wealth Secretariat. And ladies and gentleman, I’m very fond of the term, Large Ocean nations, I would urge you all to embrace this concept, and help to promote it, because rather than focus on our limitations in terms of land, we need to focus on our strengths, our possibilities and the huge potential we have in the enormous marine areas we patrol. And we want to facilitate more direct exchange of knowledge and experiences from island to island as Large Ocean Nations, and of course, we have been focusing on blue bio-economy and how to make better use of our marine resources. One exciting outcome of this concept and the focus on blue growth was the concept of blue fashion which was displayed…