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Taking Pair Trawling to a New Level |
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Archives -
2007 Archive
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Written by A. Cross
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Monday, 21 May 2007 |
After successfully lengthening Fram and Vestmenningur, Međalsbrekka continues to invest in saithe fishing: two brand new trawlers with freezing capacity are to replace Columbus and Nornagestur.
With the completion of the undersea tunnel that takes traffic out to the airport near Sörvágur, the end of the line came for the Vestmanna-based ferries that the tunnel replaced. Today Vestmanna gives the illusion of being a sleepy backwater, but that is certainly a false impression of the place.
Vestmanna is home to several leading businesses, including fishing company Međalsbrekka, a family company today run by Tummas Christophersen, who is set to take some major steps in terms of both investment and technology.
Pair trawling has been an important method of fishing in the Faroe Islands for many years and the Međalsbrekka boats went into this in 1980 as a response to the fuel price increases at the end of the 1970s.
Mr Christophersen says that although fuel prices are high now, the situation at that time was much more serious and switching to pair trawling was what was needed.
“Things were serious at that time and the choice was to switch to pair trawling or go bankrupt,” he recalls, and adds that the method was so successful that Faroese operators stayed with it, even when fuel prices fell again.
Međalsbrekka already has a recent big investment in its existing vessels behind it with the lengthening of pair trawlers Vestmenningur VN 360 and Fram VN 390 last year, and is now set to take a further step with orders for a new pair team incorporating new technology and new ideas that have not before been used in vessels of this type.
Vestmenningur and Fram were away from fishing for two months last year while they underwent extensive refits at the Faroe Yard (Tórshavnar Skipasmiđja) in Tórshavn. The two trawlers emerged from the yard fitted out with new slurry ice systems and their carrying capacity increased to 300 metric tons with prefabricated 7.50 meter sections that stretched them to almost 43m. While they had been able to operate on their traditional target species of saithe without needing to make any changes, Mr Christophersen had acquired silver smelt licences to broaden the range of the company’s activities, and this called for some changes and the additional fishroom space makes fishing on silver smelt for part of the summer a much more economic proposition than before.
He explains that with relatively low prices, silver smelt is a volume fishery and the extra fishroom capacity allows them to operate more efficiently by maximizing the payload and keeping time off the fishing grounds to a minimum.
“Last year Vestmenningur and Fram had a good year on saithe and we landed 7500 tonnes altogether, of which 2300 tonnes was silver smelt, even though we only managed half of the four-month silver smelt season due to the time off fishing spent on the refits,” Mr Christophersen says, commenting that the two trawlers also handle better in bad weather since they were lengthened.
Međalsbrekka also has a half share in trawler company Vár, set up to operate the Columbus VN 650/Nornagestur VN 660 pair team, in partnership with Dánjal Jacobsen, owner of trawlers Vesturbúgvin VN 459 and Skálafossur VN 559.
Columbus and Nornagestur were built as longliners forty years ago and later converted to trawling. Vár is a new company formed to run the pair team and its replacements that are ready to be ordered from a Spanish or local yard — the final decision had still not been taken at the time of writing. This new pair team represents a substantial investment of 100 million dkk in twin 38m vessels that will incorporate a great deal of new thinking and new technology.
As well as following the established Norwegian pattern of block freezing fish at sea, which is new to the Faroes, the new pair team are also being designed to operate with diesel-electric power systems.
While diesel-electric systems are not new either, having been in widespread use for many years, this approach is still highly unusual in vessels of this size, as using diesel engines as generators to supply electric propulsion motors and to direct power to wherever it is needed on board has until now been confined to larger ships such as sophisticated research vessels. Built to operate on saithe, the new pair will be built to freeze catches at sea, with H&G (headed and gutted) saithe block frozen instead of the conventional method of fish stored in ice to be landed fresh.
“Freezing at sea gives a better bottom line than fresh, as prices are better for fish frozen on board within an hour or two of being caught,” Mr Christophersen says, commenting on taking pair trawling to new levels.
Link to pdf presentation...
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