After a difficult year in 2023, in terms of both volume and value, albacore tuna has made a welcome reappearance in the port of Keroman.
After a slow start in August, almost a month later than usual, the albacore tuna has been providing some respectable results. The port of Keroman (Lorient) expects to see a 1000-tonne season this year – doubling the landing total of last year’s unusually poor fishery.
‘It’s not that landings have been massive or regular, but we were able to stack up several modest landings of 26-metre Irish vessels,’ said Yonel Madec, auction operations manager for the Lorient Keroman SEM, adding that the season isn’t over yet.
The Lorient pair trawlers fishing for albacore aim to continue the fishery for as long as their quotas allow – and prices have also been strong at around 50% higher than last year.
‘We are at around €3 per kg, or even more,’ according to fishing company APAK, which targets albacore before switching back to groundfish species such as hake.
A good albacore season is also a boost ahead of what is expected to be another difficult winter as the industry anticipates another Bay of Biscay closure early next year – a measure designed to protect cetaceans, but which fishermen see as absurd.
‘This spatio-temporal ban does not solve the underlying problem, because it prevents us from testing the effectiveness of the cetacean exclusion devices that we have rigged to out fishing gear,’ APAK’s spokesperson said.
