The Icelandic fishing fleet landed 94,745 metric tons (MT) of seafood last month, an increase of 6.5 percent or 5,799 MT year-on-year, according to new figures published by Statistics Iceland.
While the country’s total demersal catch in November at 40,116 MT was on par with a year ago, its pelagic catch grew by 13.5 percent to 52,307 MT. This increase is largely due to a far greater blue whiting catch, which totaled 15,740 MT last month, up 5,730 percent year-on-year.
Also last month, Iceland’s total flatfish catch increased by 23.3 percent to 1,697 MT, and its shellfish catch dropped 5 percent to 625 MT.
For the first 11 months of this year, the country’s total catch has grown by 21.3 percent to more than 1.3 million MT, said Statistics Iceland. It attributes a large part of this increase to the 37 percent rise in the country’s pelagic catch, which totaled 848,637 MT for the period.
