THERNEY HOME FROM LOFOTEN

Factory trawler Therney RE docked early yesterday morning in Reykjavík after a 38-day trip in Norwegian waters. The 1270 tonnes of fish that landed on the deck over 31 days of fishing produced 665 tonnes of frozen products with a value of  ISK400 million (FOB).

Skipper Kristinn Gestsson said that they had been fishing mainly on the seasonal fishery grounds off Lofoten in northern Norway.

‘Fishing was very good and we only lost a couple of days to bad weather. We were able to maintain production virtually the whole time and the bulk of the catch has been top-quality cod,’ he said.

According to the regulations governing the activities of Icelandic vessels fishing in Norwegian waters, by-catches of other species may not exceed 30% of the volume of cod, an in this trip the by-catch came to approximately 24%.

‘We had around 970 tonnes of cod, and other fish were mainly haddock, a little bit of saithe and two tonnes of ling. Production other than cod accounts for around 30% of the catch value. Haddock makes up a lot of that and we also have 105 tonnes of fishmeal that were produced from the heads and bones, as well as around 50 tonnes of roe. At the moment we can’t use liver to produce fish oil, but that’s something that will be addressed soon.’

‘It seems that the cod price is improving. Fishmeal has dropped in price but we get good prices for the roe. There’s a huge amount of work that goes into all this, not least on the factory deck. Now the crew get a much-deserved break and the relief crew take over for the next trip,’ Kristinn Gestsson said.