The course of the fisheries per week 6 - 2025

Blue Whiting:

It was a fantastic blue whiting week with a total of 57,700 tons recorded. Of this week's quantity, 31,800 tons were reported on Sunday. This comes from 29 different boats, with catches ranging from 950 tons to a maximum of 3,300 tons.

The entire quantity was fished in international waters, over 200 nautical miles southwest of Ireland. Fishing in this area varied quite a bit in the first part of the week, as the blue whiting was more spread out and weather conditions hampered fishing somewhat.

Over the weekend, the boats found plenty of fish, and good weather allowed them to make good trawl hauls in a short time.

This year's blue whiting quota is a total of 406,000 tons, and it is gratifying that we are getting such good fishing already early in February. Normally, we have the best fishing in the latter part of February and in March.

Good participation is expected in the coming weeks, and the hope is that the weather gods and the availability of fish are on the side of the blue whiting fishermen.

NVG-Herring:

Only a few boats have been hunting herring out at sea off Troms. From eight different boats, one of which is foreign, we have a total of 6,200 tons last week. The catches here vary from 245 tons to a maximum of 1,450 tons. The catches were made in the first part of the week, while it has been blowing gale and storm in the latter part.

The herring has not been in a hurry to swim south to the spawning grounds. The catches are mainly fished around 30 nautical miles northwest of Torsvåg (Vannøya).

The average sizes of the herring vary from 190 grams to just under 290 grams. The largest herring is the one that is first "in line" on its way to the spawning grounds.

A couple of smaller catches have also been made on the Helgeland coast with herring in the size range of 220-230 grams.

So far, 106,000 tons of this year's quota of 258,000 tons have been fished. This is a bit more than last winter when a total of 100,000 tons were fished in that season.

We expect little activity in herring fishing going forward, with only a few Norwegian boats considering herring fishing.

Since we have an agreement with the British that they can fish NVG herring in the Norwegian zone, there may be some from there who choose herring fishing now in winter.

It will be exciting to see how far south the herring comes for spawning this year.

Horse Mackerel:

In winter, some of the smaller boats hunt horse mackerel in the fjords. So far this winter, the fishing has not been great, with about 180 tons fished from these boats. This week we had a catch of 24 tons fished in Tysnes municipality.

Looking at previous years, for example, three years ago, we fished between 300 tons and 1,000 tons.

Often this fishing is best around the full moon, so we hope for a bit of an upswing at the full moon on February 12.

Sprat:

One boat, "Astrid Marie," reported 1,300 tons of sprat caught in the Baltic Sea, in the area southeast of Gotland, on Wednesday.

The catch was fished with a trawl and is sold for meal/oil use.

Bergen 10.02.2025

Kenneth Garvik

[email protected]

This article has been translated using Microsoft Copilot and may contain errors.