A Norwegian whitefish trawler had an unusual haul while fishing south-east of the Kvitebjørn oil field around 61°N, with a 30 tonne haul of mackerel in a standard bottom trawl.
According to Remøy’s skipper Kjetil Ervik, they were fishing for whitefish with twin-rig gear and one of the two codends contained this unusual catch.
‘I’ve never experienced this before, fishing at around 250 metres with a large-mesh trawl right on the botom and with a headline height of just a few metres,’ he told Sildelaget.
‘We just saw some ‘faint whiskers’ on the echo sounder and we did not imagine that this was mackerel.’
After this haul, they moved grounds to avoid catching more mackerel. The mackerel was frozen on board Remøy and landed in accordance with the regulations.
This is seen as further confirmation that the mackerel’s behaviour this autumn is different from what has been seen in previous years. Based on information from the Norwegian mackerel fleet, enough mackerel from this area has now moved to the areas around Shetland, where large amounts of mackerel have been observed.
