The harbour at Norðfjörður has suddenly become too small as the capelin season has got off to a strong start with good fising off eastern Iceland between bouts of heavy weather, and some of the shipping traffic has had to be diverted to other ports.
Greenlandic pelagic vessel Polar Amaroq was due to discharge its catches of frozen capelin into a reefer vessel, but with no space at the Norðfjörður quay in spite of the harbour extensions completed in the last few years, both ships were diverted to Eskifjörður instead.
At Neskaupstaður Síldarvinnslan’s Börkur has landed 1000 tonnes of capelin that are being routed to frozen production, while Samherji freezer vessel Vilhelm Thorsteinsson has made its second landing of the season and Síldarvinnslan’s other pelagic catcher, Beitir, is at sea.
‘We have 900 tonnes so far,’ Beitir’s skipper Hjörvar Hjálmarsson said yesterday. ‘There isn’t much to be seen during the night, but there is sone good fishing during the day. We were searching the night before last after a three-day storm. Now there is capelin over a wide area, but it’s pretty dispersed. But now we’re seeing good marks and the weather looks good for the next few days.’
HB Grandi’s pelagic vessel Víkingur is now alongside at the company’s factory in Vopnafjörður, and skipper Albert Sveinsson reported that yesterday had been slow fishing, accompanied by heavy weather and a blizzard, while the previous day had been good fishing in fine weather conditions.
‘There seems to be a band of bad weather on the grounds that has followed us. I spoke to a skipper fishing a little way north of us and he had perfect weather all day,’ he said, commenting that this was their second trip on the capelin grounds east of Langanes this year, and the capelin look to be a good size that should be suitable for frozen production as long as there is no feed in the fish.
‘We have taken samples that show from as low as 31 per kilo, and we have also seen figures as high as 37 and 45 fish per kilo. I hear that some of Venus’s fish from its last trip has gone for freezing, and they have just got back to the fishing grounds, and the plan is to freeze part of the fish we’ll be landing. But that depends on the amount of feed in the fish,’ he said, adding that they have around 1100 tonnes on board for this trip.
