“Foreign vessels have contributed the most with 5,700 t from 15 different boats. For Norwegian boats, purse-seine vessels have fished 3,600 tonnes, the coastal fleet has caught 700 tonnes and trawlers 400 tonnes.”
In Week 40, the fishing for the largest boats has taken place in two fields says Kenneth.
“One in the Norwegian Sea of around N 64⁰, 110-150 n-miles northwest of Ålesund. Here, the Norwegian and Faroese boats have fished mainly with trawls. The mackerel have been spread out, and it comes higher at night so that they can be trawled for in the upper water layers. During the day it goes down to a depth of 400 meters and only a few boats are rigged with trawls that can take the mackerel so deep.
“The second main field is southeast of Shetland in the British zone where the British and EU fleets have started their fishing this October. Two Danish boats and a Swede have fished 2,500 tonnes of trawl from here for delivery in Norway. In this area where mackerel normally gather in the autumn, access is somewhat better. So far, the boats report smaller mackerel than normal and this may indicate that the mackerel is later in its route this year.”
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Due to the fact that fishing has slowed down a bit in the last period, the boats received an increase in quotas before the weekend. One purse-seine boat received an increase of almost 10% on its original quota.
“It will be exciting to follow the development in fishing in the coming weeks,” says Kenneth. “The hope is that it attracts mackerel on the coast as we experienced last year. Some signals from coastal fishermen west of Bergen and outside Ålesund may indicate that something is in the pipeline. Many people trust that the time around the full moon in about a week can be a good period.”
The Norwegian fleet has now fished 238,842 tonnes out of the total available 326,000 tonnes quota with 86,000 tonnes remaining.
Source L The fishing Daily
