The Icelandic fishing fleet landed 41,680 metric tons (MT) of seafood products last month, a decrease of 43 percent compared with June 2015, according to the latest figures gathered by the Directorate of Fisheries and published by Statistics Iceland.
In addition to a 3 percent drop in the flatfish catch, which totaled 2,878 MT, there was a 93 percent decline in the total pelagic catch, which amounted to 2,385 MT last month.
Within the pelagic category, the blue whiting catch which dropped by almost 100 percent year-on-year to 2 MT. At the same time, the mackerel catch fell 55 percent to 2,288 MT and the herring catch was down 68 percent to 95 MT.
There was, however, an improvement in demersal landings, which totaled 35,325 MT, up 1 percent compared to June 2015. Within this category, the cod catch increased 2 percent to 17,647 MT, the redfish catch increased 4 percent to 4,578 MT and the saithe catch increased 32 percent to 5,848 MT. But the haddock catch dropped 31 percent to 1,777 MT.
Iceland’s shellfish catch also grew last month, with fishermen landing 1,069 MT of products, up 1 percent.
During the last 12-month period, Iceland landed less than 1.1 million MT of seafood, a decrease of 20 percent year-on-year.
