Cod Wars of nationalism and party competition for Iceland and pressure from the trawling industry for Britain are reasons that both sides took actions that were of noticeable risk to their broader security interests. Interdepartmental competition and unilateral behaviour by individual diplomats were also factors, with the British Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries influencing the British government's decision 'more than the Foreign Office'. A 2017 study argues that both a combination of powerful domestic pressures on statesmen to escalate and miscalculation by those statesmen contributed to the outbreak of the Cod Wars. The study argues that Iceland won each of the Cod
Murray cod grave concerns over the sustainability of this operation, and complaints about the near-absence of Murray cod in their heavily fished grounds, were being raised in the main state newspaper, The Argus. Yet, fishing effort continued to increase in the region, so in the late 1880s and early 1890s, between 40,000 and 150,000 kg of mostly Murray cod (between 7,500 and 27,000 fish, at an average weight of 5.5 kg) were caught near Echuca. Similarly, in 1883, more than 147,000 kg of Murray cod were sent to Melbourne from just one river town (Moama). By the 1920s Murray cod had been