Norwegian shipyards and designers are in the vanguard of building a new generation of ultra modern 60m plus pelagic trawlers for UK and Irish owners.
Purse seining was once the favoured method of pelagic fishing by Scottish herring fishermen, but with the switch of emphasis to deeper and faster swimming mackerel, almost all modern Scottish and Irish pelagic vessels are trawlers.
This is in contrast to Norway and Faroe, where owners still largely prefer to build combination purse seiner/trawlers.
One yard to break the Norwegian stranglehold on big UK/Irish pelagic building is Zamakona in Bilbao, Spain, which has recently delivered the new 65m sister trawlers Ocean Venture and Ocean Quest to Fraserburgh owners George Tait, Jim Watt and Alex West.
Zamakona
