Síldarvinnslan’s factory trawler Blængur has sailed after a short stopover in Neskaupstaður to land its catch after a 27-day trip.
This was a trip on mixed fishing, with a green weight catch of 760 tonnes resulting in production valued at ISK317 million.
According to skipper Sigurður Hörður Kristjánsson, the catch includes redfish, saithe, Greenland halibut, cod and silver smelt – and an increase in the amount of redfish they can catch made all the difference.
‘We started fishing on east coast grounds and had a week there. Then we had two or three days fishing off the south. From there we shifted to the Hali area and had a week there,’ he said.
‘We finished up going back to southern grounds, to the Mountains and the Skerja Deeps. We had good fishing for most of the trip and production went well.’
He reported that Blængur’s production for the trip is roughly 500 tonnes of frozen product, around 21,000 cartons, which equates to 19 tonnes of product per day fishing.
‘It made a difference that we had good weather practically all through the trip. Life is better when the weather’s fine and the winter has been a long, hard one, so it was time for a change,’ he said, and added that with two full crews working the ship, it’s important to split the summer evenly between them.
‘It makes a differnce for us that the redfish allocation was increased, as that gives us more opportunities to seach for saithe. Redfish and saithe often keep to the same grounds,’ Sigurður Hörður Kristjánsson said.
‘It has been a challenge to find saithe recently, so the increase in redfish is important.’
