Iceland’s fishermen landed seafood products totaling 120,627 metric tons (MT) last month, an increase of 1 percent compared with August 2016 with a strong whitefish catch offsetting reductions in the pelagic and shellfish harvests.
According to the latest figures gathered by the Directorate of Fisheries and published by Statistics Iceland, total demersal landings increased by 18 percent year-on-year to 39,226 MT, with cod accounting for 21,348 MT (up 25 percent from August 2016) and redfish at 7,206 MT (up 29 percent). At 3,091 MT, the haddock catch was down 3 percent year-on-year.
Iceland’s flatfish landings registered a 16 percent year-on-year increase to 2,982 MT, while its shellfish catch fell 15 percent to 1,273 MT.
The biggest decline was seen in Iceland’s pelagic catch, which slumped by 7 percent year-on-year to 77,146 MT, with mackerel landings down 13 percent to 62,884 MT.
During the last 12-month period, the Icelandic fleet landed 1,120,109 MT of seafood, an increase of 7 percent year-on-year. Only the pelagic category registered any growth during this period – up 23 percent to 669,563 MT. For September 2016 through August 2017, Iceland’s demersal catch was down 10 percent year-on-year to 418,949 MT, its flatfish landings fell 13 percent to 22,016 MT and its shellfish total was down 25 percent to 9,546 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.
