With cod showing off the north of Iceland instead off the west coast where they would normally be seen at this time of year, HB Grandi’s fresher trawlers have been fishing northern grounds and catches have been trucked to the company’s processing plant in Reykjavík.
Akurey has made its second landing in the north coast port of Sauðárkrókur, and sister vessel Viðey has also been fishing on the same grounds, having made several landings in Sauðárkrókur.
At this time of year the company’s fresher trawlers would normally be fishing Westfjords grounds, but Akurey’s skipper Eiríkur Jónsson said that there has been little to no cod to be seen there all summer.
‘It looks like there’s a shortage of feed for the fish off the Westfjords. There’s no capelin, so the fish go elsewhere,’ he said, and added that this time they started fishing on the lava grounds north of Kolbeinsey, which is a roughly eight-hour steam from Sauðárkrókur.
‘The cod there are quite dispersed, but the fishing was good once we had found cod in amounts worth catching. We sailed on Thursday afternoon, so we had four days’ fishing. We finished up on the Sporðagrunn, and from there it’s five hours’ steaming to Sauðárkrókur.’
‘We’re supposed to be fishing for cod and while that continues it’s convenient to work from here. It only takes three and a half hours to get the fish to Reykjavík by truck, so this is fresh, good-quality raw material,’ Eiríkur Jónsson said.
