The total volume of fish and shellfish landed by Iceland’s fishing fleet last month decreased by 57 percent, or more than 61,000 metric tons (MT) compared with January 2018 to 107,654 MT, according to preliminary figures compiled by the country’s Directorate of Fisheries.
While larger catches were seen in the demersal, flatfish, and shellfish categories, the pelagic catch was down by 98 percent to just 1,346 MT. This reduction was due to there being no capelin catch last month, compared to the 68,084 MT landed in January 2018.
Overall, the demersal catch climbed 17 percent to 42,964 MT, with cod rising 5 percent to 24,296 MT, haddock up 63 percent to 7,439 MT and saithe rising 67 percent to 5,945 MT. Redfish landings fell by 1 percent to 3,598 MT.
Flatfish landings for the month were up by 28 percent to 1,948 MT, while the shellfish catch increased by 231 percent to 371 MT.
Also within the pelagic category, the herring catch was up 16 percent to 1,346 MT.
The data also confirmed that the total February 2018 to January 2019 catch amounted to less than 1.2 million MT, which was a reduction of 6 percent year-on-year. Again, there were increases in the demersal, flatfish and shellfish species groups of 6 percent, 18 percent and 22 percent respectively, but pelagic landings for the 12-month period were down by 15 percent to 670,836 MT.
