The Icelandic fishing fleet landed 106,187 metric tons (MT) of seafood products last month, a decrease of 26 percent compared with May 2016, according to the latest figures gathered by the Directorate of Fisheries and published by Statistics Iceland.
In addition to a 15 percent drop in the flatfish catch, which totaled 3,245 MT, there was a 41 percent decline in the total pelagic catch, which amounted to 57,948 MT last month.
Within the pelagic category, the biggest decline was seen in the blue whiting catch, which dropped by 42 percent year-on-year to 57,703 MT.
There was, however, an improvement in demersal landings, which totaled 42,920 MT, up 8 percent compared to May 2015. Within this category, the cod catch increased 20 percent to 22,761 MT, the redfish catch increased 10 percent to 5,456 MT and the haddock catch increased 3 percent to 3,102 MT. But the saithe catch dropped 12 percent to 4,963 MT.
Iceland’s shellfish catch also grew last month, with fishermen landing 2,057 MT of products, up 27 percent.
During the last 12-month period, Iceland landed almost 1.1 million MT of seafood, a decrease of 16 percent year-on-year.
