Pelagic vessel Börkur landed 960 tonnes of mackerel to Síldarvinnslan’s Neskaupstaður plant this week.
According to production manager Jón Gunnar Sigurjónsson, they have been processing the largest and best-quality mackerel of the season from inside the Icelandic EEZ.
‘This is 500-600 gramme mackerel,’ he said.
‘Production has been going well – as it has all through the season. The largest grades, 400-600 grammes, are wholefrozen. Mackerel around 350 grammes are headed and frozen, and these are considered excellent for smoking. The smallest mackerel that we were getting earlier in the season, have been filleted.’
The end of the mackerel season is already in sight, and last week Beitir landed a 920-tonne payload for processing, when skipper Tómas Kárason reported that fishing had been on the slow side, before picking up pace again.
‘There are significant fluctuations in the fishing. In the last trip we took seven hauls and three of those were pumped on board Vilhelm Thorsteinsson. Later on we took the catch from four of Barði’s hauls,’ he said.
‘Much of the mackerel quota for the Síldarvinnslan fleet has been used up. Now we’re looking ahead to the herring season and on the way in we took a quick tow in the Héráðsflói area to check on the state of the herring. We had 60 tonnes of the finest quality Atlanto-Scandian herring. It looks like 400 gramme herring. I reckon this looks good for the herring season ahead.’
Image: Síldarvinnslan/Smári Geirsson
