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THE prawn shortage hitting the North Sea was described today as “even worse” with no prawns at all landed on Friday at Fraserburgh, normally the UK’s top prawn port.
Squid and not prawns were the landings feature at Fraserburgh and one market user described what is now a prolonged prawn shortage as “very acute”.
He added : “The whole prawn sector is now working at less than capacity. There are still good white fish landings going into Peterhead but prawn landings are very, very, poor.”
There have been prawn shortages before, but seldom for as long as this, he went on and some boats have turned to white fish with others simply staying in port rather than going to sea and wasting fuel.
Prawn scarcity is being put down to a number of factors including a lack of fish on the ground plus the impact of closures to protect juvenile fish.
The unwelcome prawn shortage is taking place against the background of a list of challenges facing white fish catchers as well, including an ongoing haddock scarcity.
And one industry spokesman said today that while some white fish boats were still doing “OK”, there were also vessels which were struggling because of lack of overall quota availability.
Rules restricting effort, plus the fact that more skippers were being forced into the North Sea for example because of lack of Faroese opportunities, plus reduced quotas were simply increasing the problems facing skippers.
“I think there is a good proportion of the white fish fleet which is going to find it very difficult to source opportunities in the directed white fish fisheries, especially for cod, haddock, whiting and saithe,” he said.
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