Icelandic fishing company, HB Grandi, is reeling from a successful summer which saw its freezer trawlers catch 6,440 tonnes of mackerel.
Icelandic fishing vessels were licensed to fish in Greenland waters from July.
HB Grandi’s vessel, Therney RE operated inside the Greenland EEZ after 13 July 2013. Höfrungur III AK began fishing in mid-July and stayed in Icelandic waters, as did Örfirisey.
Steindor Sverrisson, fleet manager, HB Grandi, told World Fishing and Aquaculture: "You could say this season has been quite different in some sense. The mackerel seemed to migrate both further south and further west compared to the seasons before. There was less mackerel by the south-west coast, but considerably more west and north-west of Iceland, and it was a bit smaller than last year's."
Örfirisey was the top catching HB Grandi freezer trawler with 3,145 tonnes of mackerel, along with 206 tonnes of herring.
Therney landed around 3,070 tonnes of mackerel and 225 tonnes of herring, plus 640 tonnes of mackerel caught in the Greenland EEZ.
Höfrungur III caught a total of 720 tonnes of mackerel and 65 tonnes of herring.
Throughout the summer season, the total by-catch of herring came to 496 tonnes, or 7% of the overall 6,930 tonnes pelagic catch.
Being able to take part in the mackerel fishery over the summer has been vital to ensuring HB Grandi’s trawler fleet would be able to fish all year round.
"This fishery is important for our freezer trawlers. It is particularly important as limited quota is left at this time of the year (the new quota year starts in September), especially as the deep see redfish quotas are now small. The deep sea redfish fishery used to take place between mid April to the end of July," added Mr Sverrisson.
The company says without the mackerel fishery, it is likely that many of its trawlers would have to be laid up towards the end of the quota year.
