This summer Icelandic fishing company Síldarvinnslan has been trialling storage of golden redfish in chilled water, in collaboration with Matís, IceFresh GmbH and the Students’ Innovation Fund.
The students running the programme are University of Iceland biology student Hafrún Hálfdanardóttir and Unnur Inga Kristinsdóttir who is a fisheries science student at the University in Akureyri. The programme has been run on board Síldarvinnslan’s fresher trawler Bjartur, and has involved Síldarvinnslan’s shoreside processing factory and Frankfurt company IceFresh.
The trials involved placing an insulated fish tub on board Bjartur, along with a refrigeration compressor to supply it with chilled seawater, keeping the contents fresh. The fish have been shipped either filleted or whole to Germany for evaluation at the end of each trip.
Unnur Inga Kristinsdóttir expects to use the project’s results as the basis of her final thesis and has spent some time at sea with the Bjartur’s crew, monitoring the condition of the catch, while Hafrún Hálfdánardóttir’s role has been to work with Matís in Neskaupstaður to analyse bacterial growth, salinity levels and other factors related to keeping fish chilled in water instead of the conventional method of boxing fish in ice.
Bjartur is now in its final trip for Síladrvinnslan before being handed over to its new owners in Iran.
