Photo: Norges Sildesalgslag / Eivind Saevik

The course of the pelagic fisheries as per week 39

NORWAY
Monday, September 28, 2020, 16:00 (GMT + 9)

Mackerel fishing in the EU zone underway and Norwegian herring from the north and west.

Mackerel:

To be at the end of September, this week's mackerel quantity is modest with only 1,450 tonnes in the record. This quantity is from four catches in purse seines with 950 t, from the coastal fleet along the west coast it has fished just over 400 t and from trawls almost 30 t have been reported as by-catch.

The week was characterized by a lot of wind which meant that the sea-going fleet mainly remained in various ports along the coast. 

The catches taken from the purse seine group were fished southeast of Shetland. Earlier this week, the boats from here reported a lot of bait in the mackerel, so the boats were waiting to fish. In the last part of the week, the bait content improved so that more people caught. 

The sizes from here on the mackerel are in the range 420-470 grams. For the boats fishing on the coast, the mackerel is considerably smaller with average weights in the range 190-350 g.

Coastal fishing vessel/Dorgeflåten Odin makrelldorger (Photo: courtesy Norges Sildesalgslag)

This weekend, a few boats have also leased in the Norwegian Sea without any significant registrations being reported. 

The coastal fleet has been out in the last part of the week, where there has been the greatest activity in the area outside Sirevåg. The fishing for this group has not been all the world with just under 40 hours as the landed quantity.

As mentioned above, we have a low weekly quantity for this week to be. Even though we have a few days left of this month, the quantity in September has so far been unusually low, with only 3,300 in the journal. If we compare five years back in time, 139,000 were reported in September 2015, where fishing for mackerel then mainly took place in the Norwegian Sea.

Next week we expect a completely different pressure in mackerel fishing. Several boats will take off and the weather forecasts for the first part of the week are good.

Norwegian herring:

1,800 tonnes of NVG herring were registered from five boats last week. The one who has contributed the most is the Icelandic boat "Margret" which fished 1,200 t east of Iceland. In this zone, both Icelandic and Faroese have fished well with herring in the last couple of weeks. The herring from here was very large with an average weight of around 440 grams.

From Norwegian waters, we have a catch of 375 t taken southwest of Tromsøflaket, with an average size of 283 g. A boat has been on the Reinefjord and fished 250 grams of herring. In addition, we have some smaller catches from the Møre area.

We are experiencing great interest from buyers in herring, and more boats will in the coming week focus on herring from the north.

North Sea herring:

From three boats, just under 1,500 t have been reported from the North Sea, where the Scottish boat "Ocean Star" alone contributed 1,200 t. On the coast we have two catches from Askvoll with 33 t. it caught 200 t of herring as a by-catch.

We expect little activity on the North Sea herring in the coming weeks.

High sea sprat:

From a Scottish boat we got a catch of 740 tons. This is fished in the Danish sector in the southern North Sea.

Coastal sprat:

Fishing for coastal sprat opened on Wednesday, and with a positive signal from marine scientists, several boats were ready in Hardanger at the opening. 

Unfortunately, it has been a disappointing catch with only 30 hours from Hardanger and 10 hours from Kvinnherad.

We can hope for better sprat times throughout the autumn.

Combi fishing for fishmeal/ oil:

In combination fishing in the North Sea, 12 boats have reported 2,400 tonnes of Norway pout, 1,000 tonnes of blue whiting, 750 tonnes of horse mackerel and 350 tonnes of herring.

For Norway pout, the boats have fished 1,450 in the EU zone in the Bressay and Fladen areas. And the rest is taken along the edge in the Norwegian zone.

 Author: Kenneth Garvik/ Norges Sildesalgslag (norwegian)

editorial@seafood.media
www.seafood.media

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