The blue whiting season for the Scottish pelagic fleet is coming to an end, with just a few weeks to go. Scottish pelagic vessels are currently at work west of Scotland, and landings have been made in Norway, Denmark, the Faroes and Iceland, as well as in Scotland, depending on processing capacity ashore.
The Scottish pelagic vessels began their fishery off Donegal, where the fish congregate in the early part of the year to spawn before then gradually migrating northwards past Scotland and up into Faroese and Norwegian waters. Around half of the Scottish fleet has blue whiting quota, which forms a key eight-week fishery every year.
This keeps shore-based processing active in what would otherwise be a quiet period when there are no mackerel and herring fisheries.
Blue whiting are found offshore at a time of year when the weather can often be challenging, so only the larger pelagic vessels in the Scottish fleet are capable of participating in this fishery.
Once the blue whiting season has come to an end, the next major fishery for Scottish fleet will be North Sea herring, which will commence with the maatjes fishery in June before the main fishery starts towards the end of July. After the end of this herring fishery, the focus will be on mackerel from October onwards.
