The Icelandic fishing fleet caught 114,258 metric tons (MT) of seafood last month, an increase of 40 percent compared with October 2016. While there were increases in all of the main species categories, the increase was largely led by a bumper herring catch.
According to the latest figures gathered by the Directorate of Fisheries and published by Statistics Iceland, the total pelagic landings increased by 78 percent year-on-year to 68,771 MT, with herring accounting for 59,284 MT (up 83 percent from October 2016) and 5,652 MT of blue whiting (up 402 percent). At 3,835 MT, the mackerel catch was down 28 percent year-on-year.
Iceland’s demersal landings decreased by 5 percent year-on-year to 42,519 MT, with cod accounting for 27,177 MT (up 1 percent from October 2016), redfish at 6,121 MT (up 26 percent), 3,769 MT of haddock (down 2 percent) and 3,512 MT of saithe (up 11 percent).
At the same time, its flatfish landings registered a 12 percent year-on-year increase to 1,812 MT, and the shellfish catch increased 61 percent to 1,153 MT.
During the last 12-month period, the Icelandic fleet landed 1,165,977 MT of seafood, an increase of 8 percent year-on-year. However, only the pelagic category registered any growth – up 24 percent to 715,517 MT. For November 2016 through October 2017, Iceland’s demersal catch was down 9 percent year-on-year to 418,392 MT, its flatfish landings fell 11 percent to 21,948 MT and its shellfish total was down 22 percent to 10,085 MT.
In the calendar year 2016, Iceland’s catch achieved a total value of ISK 133 billion (USD 1.3 billion, EUR 1.1 billion), a decrease of more than 12 percent compared with the previous year. This was achieved on a total volume of fish and shellfish of 1,067,000 MT, which was 252,000 MT less than in 2015.
