Photo: Norges Sildesalgslag /FIS

The Norwegian Pelagic Fishing Course in Week 26

NORWAY
Tuesday, July 02, 2024, 01:00 (GMT + 9)

Larger North Sea herring in the northern North Sea, and bad weather for mackerel in the north.

North Sea herring

It was an average week for North Sea herring with a total of 8,100 tonnes in the record. Best fishing day was Sunday with 1,800 tonnes, on Wednesday and Friday we had daily rates of well over 1,600 tonnes. As in the whole of June, the participation has been great, and last week over 30 boats contributed to the week's amount.

Fishing has taken place on different herring fields and in different zones. With poor collection in the Norwegian zone, more people fished in the British zone and we had 10 catches from here, a total of 2,400 tonnes.

In the Norwegian zone, the fishing is from east of Patchbanken, further north to Vikingbanken and as the northernmost field we have the area by Statfjord.

With modest quantities throughout June and much of it going to flour/oil, demand from consumer buyers has been good recently. This week, a full 7,900 tonnes of the week's quantity have been sold for consumption.

Photo: Olav Endre Drønen

The sizes of the herring vary widely, from barely 130 grams at the lowest, to over 230 grams for the herring fished in Statfjord.

Of this year's quota of 150,830 tonnes, just under 52,000 tonnes have been fished. This is slightly less than last year at the same time when we had 55,000 tonnes.

Good participation is still expected in the herring fishing next week. Consumer buyers will mainly also accept herring for a few days in July as well.

Mackerel:

For the mackerel fleet in the north, bad weather has hampered fishing for large parts of the week, where there were only conditions for a couple of days. In total, the coastal fleet fished around 800 tonnes last week. Here we see that there are little coincidences as there are over 50 catches ranging from well over two tonnes to 45 tonnes as the largest catch.

The mackerel in the north have been in shallow water where it is difficult to cast without tearing the seine. As before, it is large mackerel that you fish for, the sizes of which vary from well over 500 g and up to as much as 650 g.

In the south, there has been little mackerel where we only have six catches from Bømlo and one in Tysvær. The mackerel here has an average weight of around 400 g.

We are crossing our fingers for better weather conditions in the north so that the boats there can search over a larger area that also includes further out from the coast.

Blue whiting:

There have been few boats fishing for blue whiting last week and a total of 1,200 tonnes have been registered. This is from three boats that have fished on "The edge". In addition to blue whiting, they have fished 350 tonnes of herring.

Sprat/ Sandeel:

A couple of boats have been south of the North Sea for sprat. Here "Sille Marie" had a couple of catches with a total of 630 tonnes. The other boat was delayed and only had a minor accident.

For sprat, the quota year is now over as the quota applies from the second half of 2023 until the end of June this year. Of the quota of 10,000 tonnes, around 4,000 tonnes have been fished.

Boats from the EU (Sweden/Denmark) can fish for sandeel for longer than the Norwegian boats, and last week we registered two boats with a total of 1,800 tonnes from the EU zone.

Source: Norges Sildesalgslad (translated from original in norwegian)

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