Norwegian mackerel season slows as the quota cut bites

The Norwegian mackerel season is losing pace: the pelagic fleet landed 4,082 tonnes in the week 37 report, against 23,000 tonnes a week earlier, according to The Fishing Daily.

The 4,082 tonnes came from 32 vessels: 16 Norwegian, 14 Faroese, one Icelandic and one from Northern Ireland. Fish from the Norwegian Sea averaged 510 grams and those from the North Sea 363 grams. The coastal fleet added 150 tonnes of smaller fish, between 200 and 350 grams.

A week earlier the picture was different. The best day of week 36 alone brought in 9,200 tonnes, and Norwegian Sea fish averaged 522 grams.

Atlantic mackerel is becoming a scarce fish, and the tin on the shelf already shows it.

Norwegian mackerel season under a halved catch

The slowdown comes in a year with far less fish to share. In December 2025, Norway, the United Kingdom, the Faroe Islands and Iceland agreed a 2026 total allowable catch of 299,010 tonnes, a 48 per cent cut on 2025, with Norway holding 26.40 per cent. ICES scientists had advised a 77 per cent reduction. Norway's fisheries minister, Marianne Sivertsen Næss, said the goal remains a deal that also includes the EU and Greenland.

By early September the Norwegian fleet had caught around 31,000 tonnes of a quota of just over 77,000 tonnes, leaving about 46,000 tonnes, the week 36 report said. On 8 September the Directorate of Fisheries raised the subquota unit for purse-seiners fishing mackerel in British waters to one tonne, warning that fishing there can be stopped at short notice.

Trade figures already show the gap. Mackerel export value fell 49 per cent in August and volume 60 per cent, in the same month that Norwegian salmon exports set an August record.

Herring fills the holds, jack mackerel the tins

Herring is carrying the landings. North Sea herring reached 4,329 tonnes from 20 vessels, 3,539 of them for human consumption, while 11 vessels landed 2,752 tonnes of Norwegian spring-spawning herring between Hitra and Frøya, all for the table. It is a mixed autumn, much like the North Sea in September, where some species gain and others come under pressure.

Further down the chain, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Lidl, Waitrose and the supplier Princes are moving tinned mackerel from Atlantic mackerel to Chilean jack mackerel, a fish from another family that costs roughly a third as much wholesale and carries about half the omega-3, The Fishing Daily reported. ICES says the Atlantic stock has fallen by three-quarters in a decade.

The coastal states return to the table this autumn to set the 2027 catch. Until then, Atlantic mackerel is an autumn fish to buy with the label in view.