Tightening the straightjacket straps

‘It’s been a pretty good start. At any rate, we caught what production allocated for us. The overall catch is 120 tonnes, mostly cod,’ said Friðleifur Einarson – known as Leifur – skipper of Brim’s fresher trawler Helga María, which was on its way to dock in Sauðárkrókur when we caught up with him.

This trip was spent on the lava grounds of the Kolbeinsey Ridge, and he said that to begin with, Helga María had been fishing those grounds alone.

‘It was great to be there solo to start with, and then the number of trawlers started to climb and there was quite a group there by the time we left. There’s practically clean cod there, apart from the occasional Greenland halibut that turns up in the trawl. There’s no saithe to be seen, but they are unpredictable and tend to appear from nowhere with no warning. We don’t need to worry about golden redfish there. Redfish is really putting us in a straightjacket, and the worst part of it is that the straps are being tightened all the time. The same applies to haddock. We just do our best to avoid it and any haddock we get is by-catch. In that respect, the same applies as to redfish,’ Leifur said.

He commented that this is their second landing in a row in Sauðárkrókur.

‘In many ways it’s very convenient to land in Sauðárkrókur. We are 10 to 11 hours from the fishing grounds. That means we can work a shorter trip and land more frequently. The fish is trucked south to Reykjavík, and that takes around four hours,’ Friðleifur Einarson said.