Good times for longline fishing

Longliners are enjoying unusually good catches these days.

But many of the ships are not catching as much as they could because there is a lack of people on land who can bait the bins.

“We have had some great catches recently,” says Kári Klettskarð í Kongastovu, captain of longliner Kallanes. “But it’s a shame that we cannot put down more lines so we can catch even more.”

Hard work

Kallanes has been putting down 36 bins per expedition for the past months, but the ship has a capacity of 50 bins.

Fourteen bins are a lot when considering that each bin yields hundreds of pounds of fish on average, says Kongastovu, adding that the lack of baiters on land is a problem for many longliners these days. 

“When the ships return from their expeditions, they are greeted by big piles of unbaited bins. So the only way to prepare for the next trip is to have our crew join the on-land baiters in the baiting sheds, and that makes our work a lot harder.”

Translated by prosa.fo