Whitefish catching vessels owned and operated by Icelandic fisheries company Brim have been struggling to find large volumes of cod to fish on, but skippers believe that it’s only a question of time before there is a strong showing of the fish.
“In general, we can say that catches have been reasonable. But there’s no getting away from the fact that cod have been a challenge,” Eiríkur Jónsson, the skipper of Brim’s Akurey vessel, said. “There have been some good showings of cod, but they tend to be short. In between those we just have to search as widely as we can.”
According to the fishing reports that Jónsson has received, currently just one metric ton (MT) of cod per towing hour is expected to the north and on the Hali grounds.
“So there’s clearly no heavy fishing going on,” he said.
Reports also point to a scarcity of saithe at present.
“There were showings of saithe a few days ago on the Stéllagrunn and Sporðagrunn grounds, but neither of those lasted long. I understand that fishing is pretty slow off the east coast where they have been getting a mix of saithe and haddock. The fishing for cod ended as the herring vanished from those grounds,” Jónsson said. “Here on the Westfjords grounds, we haven’t been aware of any capelin, apart from a few capelin in the fish during the last trip. But there wasn’t much of that.”
Photo courtesy of Brim
