Successful joint management of fish recourses
The joint Norwegian-Russian efforts to stop poaching in the Barents Sea have been successful, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg states. Poaching has gone down ten times.
After their meeting in Moscow last week, both the Norwegian and Russian Prime Ministers Jens Stoltenberg and Vladimir Putin emphasized the success in the shared management of marine resources in the Barents Sea, and the effective measures that the two countries have taken to prevent poaching, MBnews reports.
- We can tell the whole world about the successful initiative made by Norway and Russia, Jens Stoltenberg said. – Norway and Russia have managed to do what other countries have not – to wisely manage shared fish resources.
So-called Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing (IUU fishing) is a serious problem facing the management of the world’s fisheries, and it has also been significant in the Barents Sea.
- At the same times as other regions of the world are experiencing overfishing and depletion of fish stocks, we have been able to attain a healthy cod stock, Stoltenberg said. We have also been able to reduce IUU fishing from 100 000 tons to 10 000 tons, he said.
The Barents Sea holds the largest cod stock in the world - the North-East Arctic cod (NEA) - and this is one of Norway’s key fisheries. The NEA cod stock has historically been the most productive cod stock in terms of commercial landings. Over the past five years, an annual catch near half a million tons of cod have been caught in the Barents Sea, and Russia and Norway are the only coastal states sharing the management of the stocks.
