Iceland’s fishing fleet landed a total of 135,031 metric tons (MT) of seafood products last month, an increase of 27 percent compared with May 2016, thanks to good catches of demersal species and blue whiting.
According to the latest figures gathered by the Directorate of Fisheries and published by Statistics Iceland, the total demersal catch for May increased by 20 percent year-on-year to 51,358 MT, with a 23 percent jump in the cod catch which amounted to 27,923 MT.
Also in the category, haddock, saithe and redfish landings increased by 17 percent, 44 percent and 22 percent respectively. In volume terms these catches amounted to 3,612 MT, 7,144 MT and 6,021 MT.
For the 12 months through May 2017, Iceland has landed 241,158 MT of cod (down 6 percent), 35,323 MT of haddock (down 16 percent), 48,013 MT of saithe (up 3 percent) and 55,859 MT of redfish (down 10 percent).
Strong growth was also seen in the pelagic category last month, which increased by 37 percent year-on-year to 79,533 MT, although this upturn was entirely led by blue whiting with a 38 percent spike in landings – amounting to 79,369 MT.
There were, however, double-digit declines in Iceland’s flatfish and shellfish landings, which amounted to 2,756 MT and 1,381 MT respectively.
During the last 12-month period, Iceland landed more than 1.1 million MT of seafood, an increase of 1 percent year-on-year.
In 2016, Iceland’s catch achieved a total value of ISK 133 billion (USD 1.3 billion, EUR 1.2 billion), a decrease of 12.1 percent compared to the ISK 151.3 billion (USD 1.5 billion, EUR 1.3 billion) in the previous year.
