Icelandic boat landing season’s first mackerel

Faxi RE docked at Vopnafjördur a couple of days ago with the first catch of the summer season for herring and mackerel. The bulk of the 360 tonne catch is mackerel, with only 50 tonnes of herring caught this trip, according to HB Grandi.

Skipper Albert Sveinsson said that they left Akranes for Reykjavík last Thursday to put their pelagic trawl on board, and the following day they were fishing on ground south-east of Hvalbak.

‘We took four hauls altogether and this early in the season it’s very difficult to say how things are. We hit some heavy weather all through the trip. The sea temperature was similar to last season, from 9°C up to 10.5°C, and as usual we can see the mackerel where they collect at the thermoclines,’ he said, commenting that the mackerel have been smaller than in previous years at this point in the season. The catch this trip was mainly mackerel of around or over 400 grammes, but at the end of the trip they were getting some mackerel down to 300 grammes.

As well as Faxi, four other pelagic vessels were fishing off eastern Iceland, while a number of vessels have been on western fishing grounds where there has been a by-catch of Icelandic summer-spawning herring with the mackerel.

Anti-roll tanks were fitted this summer to both Faxi and Lundey NS, which has yet to start fishing again. Albert Sveinsson said that Faxi’s crew have given the new anti-roll tank a thumbs-up as it has dampened the vessel’s motion significantly during the worst weather of the last trip.