Trawl trials on redfish with a T90 codend supplied by Fjardanet in Akureyri, which is part of the Hampidjan Group, have already produced promising results. The codend appears to filter out small redfish in significant amounts and the results look to be similar to those obtained by the Marine Research Institute to separate out small cod while trawling off western Iceland.
Hampidjan’s fishing gear specialist Aðalsteinn Snæbjörnsson spent a trip on redfish in the Irminger Sea to help the crew of German trawler Mark with their new pelagic Gloria trawl.
Marel has contracted with HB Grandi to supply a new roundfish processing system for its Vopnafjörður factory in north-eastern Iceland, which is now diversifying from being a purely pelagic operation into also handling groundfish.
It took one of HB Grandi’s trawlers only ten days to catch its quota of oceanic redfish on offshore grounds this year, before shifting back to concentrate on groundfish for the rest of its trip.
Fishing has been good on offshore redfish on the Reykjanes Ridge south-west of Iceland, although quotas have been dramatically in the last few years. With small quotas to be taken, there is no hurry to start fishing, and the season opened for the Icelandic fleet this week.