BarentsNews.com

Norwegian Federation of Seafood and Aquaculture Industries (FHL) expressed doubts about amounts of Russian cod catches presented last week at a joint fisheries conference in Troms?.

Russian fishermen reported a total catch of 126 000 tonnes of cod in the Barents Sea for the current year down from 164 000 tonnes last year.

The FHL managing director Kristien Mordahl regards this figure understated. He assumed that some catches had possibly been discharged onto refrigerated vessels on high seas without being reported. It looks like a growing number of large fishing trawlers operated under bareboat-charter contracts resort to such schemes, evading catches control.

As the Norwegian and Russian coast guards estimate, from 30 000 to 40 000 tonnes of cod have been discharged unreported by Russian trawlers this year. It makes a large part of the total allowable catch, and of the Russian cod quota of 183 550 tonnes.

Many Norwegian fish processors say this increasing trend for discharging on the high seas is a serious problem. Russian trawlers landed 135 000 tonnes of cod in Norway last year, but this year that figure is only 105 000 tonnes. However, Mr Mordahl and other speakers at the Troms? conference were hopeful that current changes in the Russian fish industry introduced on the state level would soon make unreported catches more difficult.

The Russian state-owned enterprise National Fish Resources is gradually taking control of bareboat chartering activities, having already purchased a number of vessels previously controlled by foreign companies.