Iceland’s fishermen landed ISK 9.3 billion (USD 90.4 million, EUR 76.1 million) worth of seafood in January, with a substantial year-on-year increase in earnings coming from the cod catch, according to the latest figures issued by Statistics Iceland.
Iceland’s total demersal catch achieved a value of ISK 6.8 billion (USD 66.1 million, EUR 55.6 million), with cod’s value increasing by 210 percent compared with January 2017 to ISK 4.6 billion (USD 44.7 million, EUR 37.6 million). There were also increases in the catch values of haddock, saithe and redfish at ISK 910.5 million (USD 8.9 million, EUR 7.5 million), ISK 412.2 million (USD 4 million, EUR 3.4 million) and ISK 573.9 million (USD 5.6 million, EUR 4.7 million) respectively.
At the same time, the country’s pelagic, flatfish and shellfish values climbed to ISK 1.9 billion (USD 18.5 million, EUR 15.5 million), ISK 569.9 million (USD 5.5 million, EUR 4.7 million) and ISK 15.4 million (USD 149,686, EUR 126,025).
However with a fishing strike taking place in Iceland from mid-December 2016 through to mid-February 2017, the January figures don’t provide a true reflection of the country’s catching sector’s performance. Indeed, the accumulated total catch value for the year February 2017 through January 2018 declined by 6.3 percent year-on-year to ISK 117.3 billion (USD 1.1 billion, EUR 959.7 million), with reductions in the demersal, pelagic, flatfish and shellfish catch values of 6.6 percent, 3.3 percent, 4.9 percent and 25.6 percent respectively.
Within the demersal total, the value of Iceland’s cod fell by 4.2 percent to less than ISK 51.9 billion (USD 504.5 million, EUR 424.7 million).
During the 12-month period, ISK 65.1 billion (USD 632.9 million, EUR 532.7 million) worth of Iceland’s total catch went directly for domestic processing (up 0.2 percent), while ISK 16.7 billion (USD 162.4 million, EUR 136.7 million) worth was sold at auction for domestic processing (down 12 percent). Landings valued at less than ISK 4.5 billion (USD 43.7 million, EUR 36.8 million) were exported in containers (down 5.4 percent), and the frozen-at-sea catch fell by 13 percent year-on-year to ISK 30.7 billion (USD 298.4 million, EUR 251.2 million).
