ICELANDIC FLEET COMPLETES BLUE WHITING FISHERY FOR THIS YEAR

Icelandic fleet completes blue whiting fishery for this year. Bri’ms pelagic vessels Venus and Víkingur docked in Vopnafjörður in Iceland last Sunday, with both having around 2100 tonnes of blue whiting in their tanks.

Skipper Albert Sveinsson of the Vopnafjörður said: ‘The best way to describe it is that we have been scratching a living. The blue whiting are moving quickly southwards and they aren’t tightly packed. So there’s no heavy fishing. Not much happens during the daytime and fishing is better in the evenings and through the night. We were getting mainly 200 tonnes for a tow, and up to 300 tonnes at best,’ Albert Sveinsson said, adding that poor weather on fishing grounds east of the Faroe Islands hasn’t made fishing any easier.

‘We had to seek shelter once this trip. That was while the low pressure that caused such exceptional weather in Iceland passed over the fishing grounds. The forecast was so bad that there was no question but to seek shelter. We went into Kollafjörður and were there for 24 hours while the worst of it passed over. Then we went back to fishing, until we hauled at six yesterday morning and headed for Vopnafjörður,’ he said.

After discharging, Víkingur will steam to Reykjavík where it will be tied up until the New Year when fishing starts again.