Decent prices contribute too

Covid and the war in Ukraine affected the prawn fishery in the North Atlantic in different ways. The Estonian government offers the industry a helping hand.

The coldwater prawn (Pandalus borealis) is the main shellfish stock in the North Atlantic. Stocks are found on the continental shelves, in the Barents Sea and Svalbard, along the coasts of Murmansk (Russia), Norway, north eastern Jutland (Denmark), Iceland, Greenland and North America’s eastern seaboard. The prawn frequents depths between 200 and 500 m and prefers a temperature range of between 1 and 6 degrees C. Total catches peaked in 2004 and have since declined, showing a 50 reduction in 2017, before recovering slightly the following years.

Maintaining a healthy stock is one way of reducing emissions

At the International Coldwater Prawn Forum held in November 2022, Dr Carsten Hvingel from the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research showed that the status of coldwater prawn stocks in the West Atlantic has largely returned to where it was in 1990. In the East Atlantic the Barents Sea stock is still underutilised. Shrimp catches are influenced by cod catches—as the latter have declined so have the former. Warming water in the West Atlantic may also have an impact on shrimp stocks. Future catches in the West Atlantic are most likely to decline which will be partly compensated by an increase in the catches from the Barents Sea. Dr Hvingel also showed the relationship between the shrimp stock biomass and the diesel consumed per kg of shrimp product. Consumption of diesel (and thereby carbon dioxide emissions) increases exponentially with reductions in the stock.

Reyktal and Reval Seafood are related Estonian companies with coldwater prawn catching operations in the North Atlantic. The latter is a joint venture between Reyktal and a Danish company, Ocean Prawn. The bulk of the catch is coldwater prawn, but small volumes of cod, Greenland halibut, and American plaice are also targeted. The two companies currently have three big (one 70 m and the other two 60 m) vessels between them—two in Reyktal and one in Reval Seafood. Covid affected transport links between countries affecting the movement of goods and personnel. Flight cancellations made it difficult to bring sailors to their destinations. Reval Seafood OÜ had to charter private planes to bring the crew back to Tallinn from Tromsø, where most of the product is landed and stored, because there were no commercial flights. The company also implemented several measures to limit the risk of infection as far as possible. These precautions applied not only to the crew on board the vessels but also to suppliers and included testing for covid both in Estonia and in Oslo and hotel rooms where workers could be quarantined when necessary. These measures hindered the transmission of the disease and as a result we had no big problems with covid, says Mati Sarevet, the managing director of Reyktal. Of course, there were costs associated with the measures, and when members of the crew did contract the disease while on leave at home finding replacements was difficult, but the fishing activity was not seriously affected.

One crisis is replaced by another

As the covid crisis tapered off the war broke out in Ukraine which brought its own complications. While border crossings returned to normal and restrictions on gathering and travelling were lifted removing the constraints the company faced during the pandemic, the price of fuel shot up. Reval Seafood’s fuel costs in 2022 doubled compared to a year ago, says Mr Sarevet, who is hoping that a government support measure for increased fuel costs that opens in February 2023 will offer some relief. A fishing trip typically has a duration of four to five weeks, but a vessel’s fuel consumption cannot all be attributed to fishing. Fuel is also used to run the generators that supply power for all the other operations on board, for example, freezing, cooking, heating, and operating the trawling equipment. Mr Sarevet is well aware of EU commitments to reduce emissions but cannot see any immediate way of switching to a more sustainable energy source.

LNG is only a temporary solution and hydrogen is still not feasible, while synthetic fuels that are produced using renewable energy are still far more expensive than conventional fuels, so there are no readymade fixes yet. In the future when we build vessels we need to ensure that they are sustainable in terms of the fuel they use and of their engines, but the technology is not there yet.

The companies will continue their activity of producing cooked, shell-on prawns, packed and frozen for the retail market. In addition, the vessels produce industrial shrimp. This is a raw frozen product intended for peeling plants and manufacturers of sushi. Among the clients for this item is a Japanese company and the vessels are therefore subject to monitoring by Japanese inspectors. The length of the fishing trips means that all the product must be frozen. Reyktal also operated a smaller vessel that fished nearer the coast making shorter trips of a week or ten days and storing the catch fresh in brine. Once on shore the prawns were packaged in modified atmosphere giving a shelf life of two weeks and were sold locally in Norway and Sweden. In both Norway and Sweden the market for fresh shell-on coldwater prawns is about 2,400 tonnes, according to the Norwegian Seafood Council. This corresponds to about 10 of the market for this species in Sweden and 25 in Norway.

Combination fishing is not without its critics

Apart from prawns the company also catches fish using an additional collection bag above the shrimp cod-end to trap the fish. This “combination” fishing in NEAFC zone Ia Ib has been MSC certified since 2017, says Mr Sarevet. With this method a sorting grid in the prawn codend directs the fish to an opening in the roof of the cod-end while allowing the prawns to pass into the cod-end. The opening is fitted with a collecting bag which catches the fish. Combination fishing enables the trawler to target shrimp and groundfish simultaneously thus reducing the carbon footprint of the fish catching. Also, as the collection bag is placed atop the trawl there is no bottom contact. The method is used by EU vessels targeting shrimp in NEAFC zone Ia as well as by Norwegian vessels in Norwegian waters south of 620 among others, but it remains controversial with some countries fighting its use. The finfish species caught by Reyktal’s vessels using combination fishing include American plaice, Greenland halibut, and cod. In the year to September

Reval Seafood caught over 3,000 tonnes of shrimp while Reyktal (Merike and Steffano) caught 7,000 tonnes of shrimp. By the year end, Mr Sarevet expects about 10,000 tonnes of shrimp, 700 tonnes of cod, and some 250 tonnes of Greenland halibut. Volumes in 2022 were higher than the previous year, but it is market prices that are the critical factor. These have recovered somewhat from the covid lows but are still not as strong as before the pandemic. The combination of strong catches and decent prices has enabled the company to keep fishing despite the high cost of fuel. The product is sold on different markets including China and the Nordic countries.

Reyktal AS

+372 627 6545 Fax: +372 627 6555 reyktal@reyktal.ee

Managing Director: Mati Sarevet

Activity: Fishing, processing on board

Fishing areas: NAFO, Barents Sea

A network of alliances

Reyktal has been in the prawn fishing business for some 25 years, but among its partners is an Icelandic company that handles sales and has been operating for 50 years. The sales companies actually started the fishing business rather than the other way round, says Mr Sarevet. The connection with the Icelandic company explains the brand, Iceland Seas, under which Reyktal’s products are sold. Another brand is Ocean Seafood which comes from the Danish company, Ocean Prawn, that is part owner of Reval Seafood OÜ. The links and associations that Reyktal has formed across northern Europe should help it weather any crises that may crop up in the future as well.

Product: Cooked prawn, frozen whole prawn

Volumes: Approx. 10,000 tonnes of coldwater prawn in 2022, minor quantities of cod, American plaice, and Greenland halibut.

Markets: Scandinavia, continental Europe, UK, China, Russia, Japan

Vessels: 3 (incl. 1 owned by Reval Seafood OÜ)