This remarkable and welcome development, says Reykjavik, reflects the tremendous strides that have been made in marine safety in recent years - but it is also a stark reminder that fishing remains a highly dangerous occupation.

Iceland, much like people in fishing ports around the UK has lived with tragedy for centuries, In the 20th century more than 4,000 fishermen were lost by drowning at sea or in large fishing lakes - more than half of them in the first 50 years and a high statistics considering the populations has hovered arond the 250,000 mark for much of that time. Even today the island is littered with trawler wrecks and there are a number of memorials dedicated to families of those lost at sea.

These figures do not includes the hundreds of British deep sea trawlermen who perished when their trawlers were allowed to fish Icelandic waters - 40 of them in two of three separate Hull trawler tragedies in 1968.

Iceland has spent heavily on coastguard facilities in the past few decades and is thought to be about to order a new fleet of rescue helicopters. But these latest statistics also reflect safer and better equipped trawlers along with improvements in bad weather forecasting. Reykjavik says that 2008 was the first year since the ninth century that no crew member has died from drowning.

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