The Icelandic pelagic fleet has been busy on mackerel after a quiet spell, and landings are now coming thick and fast to ports in the east of the country.
This week Norðurfjörður has seen three pelagic vessels landing at the same time as well as a number of smaller boats. Bjarni Ólafsson landed 800 tonnes to production, while Vilhelm Thorsteinsson landed 500 tonnes of frozen product into Síldarvinnslan’s cold store, followed by Beitir with a further 900 tonnes of fresh mackerel. Síldarvinnslan’s ther pelagic catcher, Börkur, has been off the west coast where fishing has not yet taken off to the same extent as in the east.
Bjarni Ólafsson sailed as soon as it had finished discharging and was immediately into good fishing, although the fish are not easy to handle.
‘The marks we see here are mostly small, and the fish are moving rapidly,’ said Bjarni Ólafsson’s skipper Runólfur Runólfsson.
‘It can be a challenge to catch successfully. We had a 90 tonne haul late yesterday and 350 tonnes after towing for two and a half hours this morning. Hopefully it will continue here – we’re optimistic,’ he said.
HB Grandi’s Víkingur is landing 860 tonnes of mackerel to the company’s factory in Vopnafjörður and skipper Hjalti Einarsson said that fishing was good yesterday, with mackerel visible on the surface over a wide area.
‘It’s not easy to handle the mackerel as the fish are moving fast. We followed a shoal to the north-east yesterday and they’re swimming so hard that we could hardly keep up. We did well this morning, around 160 tonnes. I hear that things were slower later in the day, but that’s the way mackerel fishing is. It pops up unexpectedly, and then there are fish everywhere, and then they disappear suddenly.’
