BLUE WHITING SEASON SLOWING DOWN

Blue whiting season slowing down. Norwegian pelagic organisation Norges Sildesalgslag reports there was a modest catch of blue whiting last week.

Eight different boats have caught 11,600 tonnes. The catch sizes vary from 230 t as the minimum to the largest catch of 2,200 t. The fishing has been uneven throughout the week, and it slowed down later in the week with long trawl hauls, with modest catches.

Of this week’s quantity, 11,000 t are fished west of Ireland in the EU zone. In the North Sea along the “Edge”, two boats have fished almost 600 ten combination fishing with other species.

Norwegian boats have now fished a full 306,000 tonnes of the quota of just under 379,000 t. Of this quantity, a full 203,000 t have been fished in international waters west of Ireland. The fishing has now been going on for two months, and one can look back on very good fishing with unusually good weather conditions for blue whiting fishing.

Since the fishing slowed down a lot in the latter part of the week, and that the access in the so-called “Irish box” is gone this year, the boats have now moved over to fishing in the Faroe zone. There are a good number of foreigners working and trawling for blue whiting. Norwegian boats can fish up to 50,000 t in this zone.

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