News

Mackerel more than half of 'herring' catch

Faxi and Ingunn are pair trawling for herring east of Iceland where bad weather has brought fishing to a temporary halt. But before the weather worsened, they managed 650 tonnes in two hauls, of which mackerel was a large proportion of the catch.

According to Ingimundur Ingimundsson of HB Grandi's pelagic division, the skippers decided to start fishing west of the Thors Bank, where they took 300 tonnes in their first haul, of which 34% was mackerel. A second haul further east landed 350 tonnes, of which 70% was mackerel, giving them a total of 350 tonnes of mackerel for their short trip.

There is still bad weather on the fishing grounds, but this is expected to have passed over by the middle of the week.

Production manager Sveinbjörn Sigmundsson at HB Grandi's Vopnafjördur plant says that everything is ready to accept catches of herring and other species, although as he understands from the skippers that the herring have a high feed content at present, these catches are not likely to be suitable for human consumption production.