There have been some big landings and steady fishing as the blue whiting migrate northwards through Faroese waters.
Bjarni Ólafsson last week landed 1750 tonnes to Síldarvinnslan’s Neskaupstaður factory and the Polish-registered Janus landed 1650 tonnes in Seyðisfjörður. Börkur is back at sea after landing a full trip, also discharged in Seyðisfjörður.
Síldarvinnslan’s Beitir landed a 2200 tonne trip in Neskaupstaður at the end of last week, bringing its total for this season to 9300 tonnes to date. According to skipper Tómas Kárason, the season has been a good one, but fishing has been variable.
‘We were called in to land these 2200 tonnes as it’s important to keep the factory’s production steady with not too much landed at the same time,’ he said.
‘The trip started well with 650 tonnes in the first haul, and then the fishing slowed down. The fish has been dispersed and the pelagic boats have had to fish long tows. It was pretty quiet when we sailed, but that’ll change. Fishing for blue whiting is often like that. There’s good fishing and then there are periods of poor catches.’
Both of HB Grandi’s pelagic vessels have been fishing in the Faroese zone and Venus docked yesterday in Vopnafjörður with 2500 tonnes of blue whiting in its tanks.
