Norway restricts Russian fishermen's presence near Spitsbergen
The Norwegian coast guard vessel "KV Senja" has closed a vast fishery near the Spitsbergen island for Russian trawlers following allegations of exceeding acceptable levels of fishing in the harvest of small fish, Interfax reports.
"The Norwegians have closed the fishery for our trawlers, without even telling us in whose trawls inspectors found this codfish and haddock," Arkhangelsk Trawl Fleet's (ATF) spokeswoman Nina Zelenina told Interfax on Tuesday.
Moreover, "none of our vessels were inspected by inspectors from the neighboring country," she said.
According to the ATF, the permitted 15% of small fish has not been exceeded for any type of fish, however the trawl fleet has accepted the demands and a group of vessels has left the area with good fishery potential in search of new ones, wasting its time and burning costly fuel.
The fleet management believes that, "this is an old problem: there is still virtually no protection of the interests of Russian fishermen in the so-called 200-mile fishing zone. We have no inspection vessels in this area, so there is no one to challenge the decision of foreign inspectors," Zelenina said.
Meanwhile, a Murmansk-based fishery control organization, Murmanrybvod, has sent its rescue tug "Mikula" on a fishery protection mission from Murmansk to the Spitsbergen area. According to the Russian fishery authority's Belomorsk area department, on board the vessel is a group of the department's inspectors, whose main tasks are to ensure the presence of the Russian fishery protection vessel in the Spitsbergen area, to defend Russian fishing interests and to inspect Russian trawlers fishing in the archipelago waters.