The total volume of fish and shellfish landed by Iceland’s fishing fleet fell by 17 percent, or more than 210,000 metric tons (MT), last year to 1,048,202 MT, according to preliminary figures gathered by the country’s Directorate of Fisheries.
Much of the overall decrease is attributed to a zero capelin catch in 2019, but there were also declines in the volumes of flatfish and shellfish landings, while the demersal catch was unchanged at 481,512 MT.
Within the demersal category, cod landings fell 1 percent compared with 2018 to 273,022 MT. The volumes of saithe (64,697 MT) and redfish (53,529 MT) were also down by 2 percent and 8 percent, respectively. Offsetting these declines, the haddock catch climbed 19 percent to 57,918 MT.
Flatfish landings for the year slipped by 18 percent to 22,232 MT, while the shellfish catch was down 19 percent to 10,082 MT.
Meanwhile, the lack of capelin, which amounted to 186,333 MT in 2018, saw last year’s total pelagic volume drop by 28 percent to 534,373 MT. In this category, there were also reductions in blue whiting (down 8 percent) and mackerel (down 6 percent), which totaled 268,351 MT and 128,085 MT respectively. These were partly compensated for by an 11 percent jump in the herring catch at 137,936 MT.
The Directorate of Fisheries’ data also highlighted that the December 2019 catch totaled 63,437 MT, which was 12 percent less than in the last month of 2018. There were increases in the demersal (up 6 percent) and pelagic (up 19 percent) species categories, while the flatfish and shellfish landings fell by 8 percent and 58 percent, respectively.
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