Brim: Helga María’s Greenland assignment going well

‘We have two trawl locations to go. At the moment we’re towing a camera sled south of Kulusuk in Eastern Greenland. Altogether, this later part of the survey has gone very well. For those of us who are used to fishing on home grounds, the time spent here has been quite an adventure,’ said Helga María’s skipper Friðleifur Einarsson earlier today.

Helga María has been chartered by the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. The first part of the survey was to examine shrimp distribution off western Greenland, while the second part has been devoted to surveying the distribution of cod, redfish and shrimp off eastern Greenland.

‘I took over from Heimir Guðbjörnsson who was skipper for the first part of the survey. We went south from Nuuk to a small town called Qaqortoq and were there for two days. From there we went to the east coast, which is where we have mainly been,’ Friðleifur Einarsson said, commenting that conditions have been variable, until the weather dropped away to a the present flat calm.

‘The furthest north we have been is 66°52’N and we haven’t had any problems with ice, apart from the ice and fog that drove us off the Dohrn Bank. We had to miss a couple of the scheduled tows there, and altogether there are around a hundred tows scheduled. In addition, we need to take a look at the seabed in a few places, and that’s done using the camera sled,’ he said.

Helga María is expected to be back in Reykjavík on 3rd August. First there are a couple of tows to be taken and a call in Tasilaq. The steam time home is expected to be around 40 hours.