GREAT WEEK FOR NORWEGIAN CAPELIN FLEET

It was another good blue whiting week with a total of 53,500 tons in the journal. This quantity is fished by 29 different boats with catches from 670 t as the lowest, to the largest catch from “Havskjær” at 2,600 t.
All catches, except from a Scottish boat, are fished in International waters southwest of Ireland. Fishing here this winter has been particularly good with unusually dense patches of blue whiting. This week, a lot of wind has hampered fishing some days.
With such good fishing over several weeks, the group has now fished just under 179,000 tons of the quota of around 305,000 t. This is a totally different picture than last year when only a modest 8,800 t were fished from the same area.
Nine boats in the group blue whiting trawl, and three boats from pelagic trawl, have finished their boat quotas.
It is expected that there will still be good participation in this fishing, but some boats will focus on capelin fishing in the Barents Sea. The hope is that there will still be blue whiting available outside the 200 n. mile west of Ireland a week-two.
As expected, the best capelin week of the year from the Barents Sea was reported. A total of 11,900 tonnes were caught last week. Of this quantity, purse seines have fished 8,500 t, trawls 2,000 t and from the coastal group 1,400 t.
The fishermen report good capelin registrations and many good net throws have been taken. It is fished over a wide area with one westerly seep on Malangsgrunnen, north of Senja. Further east, catches have been taken north of Rolvsøy, and further east to the north of the North Cape, as well as catches to the east 29⁰ 30′, which becomes north of Berlevåg.
According to contacts, the Russian fleet has fished well in its zone, so the capelin is spread over one large area
All capelin catches have been traded for human consumption and there has been good interest from buyers. And the catches from last week have been sold to buyers from Karmøy in the south to Tromsø in the north.
As usual, the capelin in the Barents Sea is slightly smaller than in Iceland. The coat sizes range from 45 to 58 pcs./kg. With a total average of around 50 pcs./kg. A positive feature is that the capelin has had little bait content.
What makes the capelin attractive is the content of capelin roe. The catches last week have contained from 18 to 23.5% roe, and most have sorted ho and male capelin for the various markets. Egg pressing is expected to become more relevant in the future.
13,800 t out of the quota of 37,150 t has now been fished. With good availability and good weather conditions, it is expected that the coming week will be the best week for capelin fishing in the Barents Sea.
There was a modest weekly quantity of just 1,500 tons for NVG (spring spawning herring). This is divided into six catches with quantities from 150 t to 340 t.
The catches were taken on the Helgeland coast at the height of Sandnessjøen. The sizes of the herring range from 287- 330 grams. The herring were in spawning mode, and several of the catches were used for pressing herring roe.
A brief look at this winter’s herring fishing shows that Norwegian boats have fished more than 167,000 tonnes since the New Year. This is barely 20,000 t more than last year when we had 148,000 t. In addition, foreign boats have fished 9,000 t.There has been good quality of the herring and good interest from consumer buyers, where much of the catches have been used for fillets.
What has been different is that herring fishing has taken place further north than last year. And the special thing here is that there has been no herring fishing at the known spawning grounds in Møre.
Here they have been fishing herring since time immemorial in winter, except when herring fishing was closed after the collapse in the late 60’s.
Bergen 13.03.2023
Kenneth Garvik
Source: Fishing time week 10 – Norges Sildesalgslag (sildelaget.no)