Freezer trawler Vigri docked in Reykjavík on Sunday evening after a highly successful trip to the Russian part of the Barents Sea. The green weight of fish for the 23-day trip was 1210 tonnes, an average of 53 tonnes per day.
‘I think this is a record trip for us on Vigri. Production was running practically non-stop the whole time we were fishing and at its best we were producing 70 to 80 tonnes a day,’ said skipper Árni Gunnólfsson, who has plenty of experience of fishing in both Norwegian and Russian areas of the Barents Sea.
‘This is my fifteenth year in the Barents Sea and the fishing is some of the best I’ve seen there. It’s seen as pretty good to be over 1000 tonnes for a trip, especially with such a small number of fishing days. Most of the time we were fishing on the Gilden Bank north of Murmansk, which is where all of the Icelandic trawlers were fishing. Co-operation was very good, and that’s one of the reasons for this success.’
There is always some by-catch with the cod, and haddock is the only species apart from cod that is subject to quota in Russian waters.
‘There’s always some rough dab and starry ray, and this time we also had 45 to 50 tonnes of saithe as by-catch. The fish is in fine condition and the cod are large, meaty fish. We had fine weather all the time on the fishing grounds, but had the wind against us on the way home, and the currents weren’t in our favour. We steamed six days on the way out and five on the way home, so eleven days went into steaming to and from the fishing grounds,’ Árni Gunnólfsson said.
