Scotland is experiencing a surge in hake and squid catches and is assessing new opportunities to market the fish, according to Jess Sparks, technical and environmental manager for Seafood Scotland.
“Northern European hake is one that Scotland has seen a tremendous uplift in the past three or four years, and, to be honest, we’ve not seen volumes of hake like that before,” said Sparks. “We’ve always had hake caught as an incidental bycatch that’s been sold as a commercially valuable species, but not as a targeted species. The catching patterns have changed, and hake has now become far more important.”
Where the industry used to see maybe 1,500 metric tons of hake landed annually, now it is up to several thousand metric tons, according to Sparks.
“[The increase in volume] has almost caused a market problem because although we’ve been used to seeing small quantities of hake but not in any established volume. And to suddenly have the catching sector landing these larger volumes of hake, where’s the market for that, because we don’t have an established market for it. The [job of] Seafood Scotland and the industry as a whole is to find the best opportunities to sell products like Scottish hake into the European market and the UK market because it’s one species that we have seen a very distinct change in the last three or four years.”
While there is a strong market for hake in Europe, the market is already well established, and product is imported from other areas. Sparks said both Seafood Scotland and the industry are aiming to highlight the fact that Scotland has an established route for hake to be soured.
In addition, on a more seasonal basis, Scotland is also seeing an significant increase in squid landings.
“Again, [squid] has always been a species that there’s always been quantities of; it’s just become more of an established trend, and that’s been a good one from the point of view of both fresh and frozen,” said Sparks. “It’s been an underutilized species for Scotland.”
