The place grows on us. The HM arrived to see us - first time in Iceland – and told us where we’d be fine to stay and also told us where to find the shop. This was once again in the garage. I was disappointed that it had no bread, not even plastic sliced, but on asking the girl replied in perfect English that she’s just finished baking it.

 

So breakfast was much improved and we then spent a merry hour or so washing and Hoovering, so the heads is now festooned with clothes dripping from hangers but it was rather overdue. After that we walked around until hailed by a young man who asked us about the boat and volunteered lots that was wrong with the new edition of the RCC pilot book (not bad considering it was only published in July 2014). After some chat about sailing we asked about the factory tour, but that’s another error, this time in ‘Lonely Planet’, and the last one of the day started half an hour ago. But his organisation, and in fact he himself, did tours round the whole village explaining the economics and the fishery system. We duly booked to go on the next one and are in fact mightily impressed.

 

They have created the most eco-friendly and sustainable system they can devise, and it does seem to work. They are certainly the main employer and this village is growing unlike it’s neighbours (although some of the growth it has to be said is from Polish or in the case of our guide, German, workers).

 

Starting with the fishing boats, they are all small, around 25 – 30 feet and so operated by just one or two people, and fast (up to 30 knots) so they can get to the fisheries in 40 mins and all return to port each evening. This means that they time from fish being caught to being sold (in Grimsby mainly) is only 36 hours, much quicker than the UK trawler fleet manages. The second thing is that they do no trawling or netting at all; it’s all caught on lines, some jigged and some baited hooks which means they have almost no by-catch and can be much more species and size selective. Just as well as the Icelandic have a law which obliges 100% of fish caught to be brought ashore, as well as quotas and fines for catching the wrong species or immature fish. A third advantage he didn’t mention is that the capital investment on boats and equipment is much lower, maybe 1/20th, that of a trawler so the pressure of loans and mortgages doesn’t force boats out at sea for long voyages in unsuitable weather. The accident rate is much reduced anyway and it has almost become a 9-5 job (well, more like a 6am – 4pm job as far as we can tell).

 

We were then taken to the factory, albeit not into the main machinery area. The striking thing is that there's no smell, and no seagulls hanging around. There’s no discharge at all; they use 100% of the fish.

 

The best fish goes to market as wet fish either whole or filleted. The second best fillets get frozen and exported to Britain and Scandinavia to be used for fish-and-chips. The worse again is turned into fish balls for the US market, or fish-sticks for the Germans.

 

An interesting quirk: our guide said that the demand from the UK for Cod from the fish and chip trade has fallen off dramatically in the last couple of years and most of the demand is now for Haddock, which is nothing like as plentiful supply or as sustainably fished. He was mystified, but of course the explanation is that we’re all told by Fearnley-Whittingstall among others to avoid Cod as it’s not sustainably fished. Well, that’s true of the way we fish for it in the North Sea, but since we’ve now fished out our own stocks and get it from Iceland instead maybe this advice is wrong and/or counter-productive.

 

The heads and back-bones with their tiny scraps of flesh left after filleting are air dried and shipped to Nigeria, where apparently there is a an eager market paying ready money. Actually we got to taste some, and it’s not at all bad. The skins are dried and cured to be used to make leather goods, and remaining stuff, mostly guts we suppose, is used to make animal feed and sold to Denmark (Peter and I suppose it explains the ‘taste’ of Danepak bacon). A peculiarity is that the livers all go to France; what do they do with them / why is France the highest paying market? Pills we surmise. We forgot to ask the destiny of the tongues and roe.

 

The place is a stark contrast not only to Vestmanaejar, where the trawlers are huge and new and company owned, but also to the other villages here in the Vestfjords which all seem to be dying whereas in this one the population is growing. We asked why and were told that Þingeyri had simply made bad decisions about investment, but we rather discount this as local rivalry, not to mention that the government they heap so much scorn on has built this community a road tunnel direct to Isafjordur making it an easy all-weather drive whereas the inhabitants of Þingery have a 2 hour drive on awful roads, which in any case are blocked by snow or rock falls for 60+ days a year.

 

Some of the catch today:

Saithe, aka coal-fish

 

Halibut, all rather smaller than we’d expected.

 

Wolf fish looking rather forlorn, as well they might

 

And Cod; not all caught by Peter

 

We also saw them landing a small number of Redfish, Skate and Hake.

 

A very fishy day, but of course you can’t actually buy any; the Icelandic simply go and catch their own whenever they need, so there’s no local market at all. Since we’ve been in port all day our pasta this evening was of irresponsibly fished and unsustainable tinned tuna – shh.

 

We finally went to a municipal swimming pool – already on winter opening hours – which is heated by a hot spring. Very nice it was too. Staffed by a German lady. We have met rather few Icelandics in such positions; the cafés employ young British or Germans and Poles do the manual labour.

 

Awelina lying amongst the small fishing boats, all home by evening.