BLUE WHITING FISHERY PROVING CHALLENGING

Blue whiting fishery proving challenging

Blue whiting fishery proving challenging with bad weather off the west coast of Ireland. There has been a small fleet of pelagic vessels from Iceland, the Faroes and Russia fishing in the area.

Bergur Einarsson of the Icelandic vessel Venus said: “What’s striking about fishing here is how brutal the weather is. We get a few hours between storms and that’s when we have to make sure we get the gear in the water. Now there’s bad weather forecast until Thursday and there’s nothing for it but to sit it out,’ said Venus’s skipper Bergur Einarsson.

‘We’ve made one landing since we started fishing for blue whiting and that was a 2500 tonne landing. Now we’ve been eight days at sea and so far we have 1900 tonnes. It speaks for itself that we won’t be adding to that until the end of the week due to the weather. By then we might be able get back fishing,’ he said.

Venus and its sister vessel Víkingur can stay at sea for roughly two weeks after the first fish has been pumped into the tanks. It also has to be taken into account that there is a very long steaming time from the fishing grounds to Vopnafjörður – around 900 nautical miles, taking three days.