The President of Iceland believes his country and Newfoundland and Labrador can learn a lot from each other’s fishing industries.

Guðni Thorlacius Johannesson and his wife paid a visit to the province yesterday while in the country for a state visit.

He says the fishery was top-of-mind for his meeting with Premier Andrew Furey at Confederation Building.

Iceland suffered a collapse of its cod fishery, similar to the cod moratorium here, and managed to rebuild the commercial fishery by tackling foreign overfishing, and by implementing tighter management practices and a focus on sustainable fishing policy.

Johannesson says Iceland “learned the hard way” that not controlling the fishery can lead to trouble.

He says the fishery in Iceland is managed carefully through a series of quotas, and while the system isn’t perfect, he says they can be fairly certain that their stocks won’t be depleted.