According to Morgunbladid, only 8,500 tonnes out of 34,470 of the allocated quota of the deepwater oceanic redfish have been caught so far this season.
The main fishing grounds for oceanic redfish are on the Reykjanes Ridge in the waters to the south of Iceland. “The environment has changed and the fish are behaving differently” said Gudmundur Jonsson captain of trawler Venus. “Those of us who have been fishing here over the past years have never seen anything like it,” he said. Gudmundur pointed out that the ocean in the redfish grounds has warmed up in recent years but otherwise he offered no explanation for the changes.