The Parties sought an agreement on the West Greenland quota which reconciled the following principal considerations:

- An agreement should take effect in 1993;

- Quotas should be determined annually based on the best available scientific advice from ICES;

- A quota would adjust up or down relative to the best available scientific advice;

- A quota agreement should recognize a transition period to implement the significant adjustment required to accommodate new ICES advice given in 1993;

- A quota agreement should commit the Parties for a significant period and not be subject to change in its fundamental parameters unless agreed by the Parties.

The Parties recalled:

- Article 3.2 of the Convention that “the objective of the Organization shall be to contribute through consultation and cooperation to the conservation, restoration, enhancement and rational management of salmon stocks subject to this Convention, taking into account the best scientific advice available to it”;

- Article 9(g) to take into account “the interest of communities which are particularly dependent on salmon fisheries”.

Accordingly, the Parties, in order to address the decline in abundance of wild stocks of Atlantic salmon and to provide adequate spawning stocks of 2SW fish to support sustainable populations, agree to establish an annual quota for each of the years 1993 to 1997 by application of the following mechanism:

The quota shall be based on scientific advice from the following sources, and applied in the following manner without prejudice to new advice from ICES:

- The ICES advice on the pre-fishery abundance of potential 2SW salmon of North American origin (and European origin if available);

- The ICES advice on the target spawning escapement reserve of potential 2SW salmon necessary to achieve target spawning escapement, or a different proportion of this reserve as agreed to by the Parties;

- Any surplus above the target spawning escapement reserve, or the proportion agreed to, may be available for harvest by the Parties;

- Allocation of the surplus shall be based on the average for the period 1986-1990 of the harvest share of potential 2SW salmon of North American origin caught at West Greenland (40%), or a different share if agreed upon by the Parties;

- Any other parameters used by the Parties shall be as advised by ICES.

The Parties, recognizing the difficulty of establishing a new catch quota for the 1993 West Greenland fishery at the levels recommended by ICES, hereby agree to a 1993 catch quota of 213 tonnes which is expected to achieve 72% of the ICES target spawning escapement reserve. This quota is expected to provide for an increase in the spawning escapement of approximately 50 per cent over the average of the past 10 years.

For 1994 the Parties seek to achieve a minimum of 85% of the ICES target spawning escapement reserve level as advised by ICES at that time, and thereafter, the Parties will seek to achieve 100% of the ICES target spawning escapement reserve level. Any increase in the pre-fishery abundance advised by ICES for 1994 above that advised in 1993 will be applied first to increasing the percentage of the target spawning escapement reserve to be achieved in 1994.