Brim’s fresher trawler Akurey is fishing now on the Hali grounds and according to skipper Jón Frímann Eiríksson, they were a few days into the trip before the weather improved enough to work both trawls.
‘To start with there wasn’t weather for fishing, practically blowing a storm, but it’s dropped away now. Today it’s been fine. We’ve been able to tow two trawls all day and fishing has been good,’ he said, and estimated that the catch so far is around 80 tonnes. The bulk of the catch is cod, plus some other species such as saithe.
Akurey is scheduled to dock in Grundarfjörður tonight, and by discharging there for the catch to be trucked to Reykjavík, significant savings are made in steaming time and fuel consumption.
He was also Akurey’s skipper for the previous trip, which ended with a 140 tonne landing in Reykjavík.
‘Everything worked out perfectly as we could work the twin-rig gear, almost right up to the end of the trip when yet another depression caught up with us. We were on Westfjords grounds the whole trip. We took the cod allocation easily and were getting two and up to two and a half tonnes per towing hour, while those working one trawl were mostly getting a tonne per hour.’
He said that there hasn’t been a great deal of saithe to be seen off the Westfjords.
‘They say that saithe are elusive, and I can agree with that. A reason for low saithe catches is also that nobody wants to go and search for it for fear of getting golden redfish instead. There are plenty of trawlers in the situation that if they catch too much redfish, then their whole fishing year is in jeopardy. We’re only a quarter of the way into the quota year and it’s a tragedy to have to tie up when there’s plenty left of other fish in the sea,’ Jón Frímann Eiríksson said.
