Iceland’s fishermen landed 125,857 metric tons (MT) of wild-caught seafood last month, an increase of 11 percent compared with September 2016 with a large mackerel catch offsetting reductions in the demersal landings.
According to the latest figures gathered by the Directorate of Fisheries and published by Statistics Iceland, total pelagic landings increased by 21 percent year-on-year to 89,797 MT, with mackerel accounting for 70,153 MT (up 32 percent from September 2016) and 1,396 MT of blue whiting (up 8 percent). At 18,248 MT, the herring catch was down 7 percent year-on-year.
Also registering an increase, the total shellfish catch was up 9 percent to 1,198 MT.
Demersal landings, meanwhile, decreased by 8 percent year-on-year to 32,936 MT, with cod accounting for 21,226 MT (down 4 percent from September 2016), redfish at 4,891 MT (down 6 percent), 3,047 MT of haddock (down 5 percent) and 2,621 MT of saithe (down 18 percent).
Iceland’s flatfish landings registered a 12 percent year-on-year decrease to 1,926 MT.
During the last 12-month period, the Icelandic fleet landed 1,113,047 MT of seafood, an increase of 6 percent year-on-year. Only the pelagic category registered any growth during this period – up 21 percent to 685,355 MT. For October 2016 through September 2017, Iceland’s demersal catch was down 10 percent year-on-year to 416,249 MT, its flatfish landings fell 15 percent to 21,760 MT and its shellfish total was down 25 percent to 9,648 MT.
In the calendar year 2016, Iceland’s catch totaled ISK 133 billion (USD 1.3 billion, EUR 1.1 billion), a decrease of 12.1 percent compared to the ISK 151.3 billion (USD 1.4 billion, EUR 1.2 billion) in the previous year. This value was achieved on a total volume of fish and shellfish of 1,067,000 MT, which was 252,000 MT less than in 2015.
