Sudureyri (Suðureyri) - A Sustainable Fishing Community
Sudureyri (Suðureyri) - A Sustainable Fishing Community
Sudureyri is an environmentally friendly fishing village near the mouth of Sugandafjordur. The village is accessed from the tunnel connecting Isafjordur and Onundarfjordur from where the road drops through a side tunnel to the steep south shore of the fjord.
Sudureyri sees no sun for three months of the year – longer than any other village in Iceland.
Here, and elsewhere in the fjords of Iceland, the locals celebrate with Sun Coffee on the day the sun returns to the village.
Heated by water from its own geothermal borehole, the village has a wonderful outdoor swimming pool, and a cafe and fish restaurant, serving locally caught fish.
In the village, you'll find a pond teeming with cod, so docile that they can be petted and fed some fish food! In the village, you can learn how to prepare the bait lines and join a boat crew to fish with the locals.
Icelandic fishing boats have undergone many changes in the last 100 years. Rowing boats were replaced by motor boats, decked wooden vessels, steel ships, and purpose-built trawlers.
Today Sudureyri operates mostly “speedboat” fishing using small, fast vessels which can quickly reach the offshore fishing grounds and return to land with fresh, high-quality catches.
Fishing methods include long-lines and hand-lines and most of the catch is processed as soon as it is landed.
The difference between hand-line fishing and long-line fishing is mainly that long-lines are prepared on land by a baiting team while no such preparation is necessary for hand-lining.
Long-lines can contain up to 10,000 hooks. At the fishing grounds the boat lays the lines out on the seabed then they are heaved on board two hours later.
The fish factory Islands saga offers guided tours around the state-of-the-art processing plant. The fish is processed swiftly and packaged for export and is on sale in Europe just 36 hours after it was landed.
For fishing trips and fish, factory visits contact: www.fisherman.is