Brim’s factory trawler Örfirisey is steaming home to Reykjavík from a a 40-day trip to the Barents Sea. The catch is a 1576 tonne green weight of fish. This is a record for Örfirisey, breaking its previous record of 1530 tonnes.
According to skipper Thór Thórarinsson, this trip was spent in Norwegian waters. Fishing started on the Fugløy Bank, which is four days’ steaming from Reykjavík.
‘There wasn’t much there, so we quickly moved eastwards to the Hjemmel Bank. There was good fishing there for cod and that’s where we spent most of the trip,’ he said, commenting that according to the Norwegian regulations, the maximum allowable by-catch of haddock with the cod is 30% . But they came nowhere near that limit, with only 70 tonnes of haddock for the whole trip.
He said that towards the end of the trip the fishing on the Hjemmel Bank slowed down, and he decided to head back to the Fugløy Bank. Things were still quiet there, and the decision was taken to finish the trip on the seasonal grounds off Lofoten.
‘We had six days there. Fishing was fine and all the cod went into the largest grades. The fish we had off Lofoten were certainly around five to six kilos, and were smaller on the more northerly grounds. This is all excellent quality fish,’ Thór Thórarinsson said, adding that he expects to end the 40-day trip by docking in Reykjavík today.
Of its 40 days at sea, Örfirisey spent approximately a month fishing, as ten days were spent steaming to and from fishing grounds.
