Nobody left the ship when Útgerðarfélag Akureyringa fresher trawler Kaldbakur EA-1 landed its catch in Akureyri earlier this week.
The discharging gang was at work at six in the morning, and by midday Kaldbakur was heading out again to start a new trip, with the same crew on board. According to skipper Sigtryggur Gíslason, this is a precaution to minimise the chance of any Covid infection making its way on board.
‘We work with a double crew and change over roughly every eighteen to twenty days, so that’s three trips,’ he said. ‘This arrangement is how we are trying to prevent infection, and we’re taking every precaution. The crew are completely in tune with this, and it’s not as if we have any other options. We’re hoping that as spring approaches we might see the end of this pandemic.’
Kaldbakur landed 110 tonnes of mainly cod, and according to Sigtryggur Gíslason, this was a trip that was through heavy weather the whole time, mostly working in wind speeds of around 20m/sec of fishing grounds off the east of Iceland.
‘We started on the Rifs Bank, but the weather there was terrible, so we steamed east to the Digranesflak grounds. There was heavy weather there the whole time but fishing was reasonably good,’ he said.
‘The cod off the east coast aren’t as large as off the west at this time of year. This was our second trip of the year on eastern grounds, and that’s simply due to the weather. Since New Year we have had very unpredictable weather conditions, but fishing has been acceptable.’
