With an allocated quota of only 100,000 tonnes for this season, the capelin fishery is expected to be a short one this year for the Icelandic fleet.
The Marine Research Institute has also recommended that there should be no additional quota added to the present allocation, which means that the season is expected to be a short one as the capelin start to from dense shoals in shallow water off the coast of southern Iceland.
According to HB Grandi’s pelagic fleet manager, the company’s two pelagic vessels Víkingur and Venus this season have approximately an 18,000 tonne share of the quota between them.
‘We got here last night and right away we started seeing dust on the sounder. That’s the way it has been all day. There’s capelin here but it’s all in very scattered shoals. There are five ships searching for capelin and nobody has been able to shoot away yet,’ commented Víkingur’s skipper Albert Sveinsson at the weekend as they searched for capelin on the Hrollaugseyjar grounds.
Albert Sveinsson said that there had been very poor weather, with high winds and heavy seas, and with a northerly wind predicted for the coming days, they would have liked to have seen more positive forecast.
‘We’ve heard that the Norwegians fishing off Stokksnes have been able to fish but the capelin in that area were very small earlier in the week. A few Icelandic vessels shot off Stokksnes as well and didn’t have much to show for it. We don’t expect to see much happening until the capelin start to gather on the shallow grounds, and sometimes it only needs one tide for that to start happening,’ he said.
