The Irminger Sea, near Greenland and Iceland, is home to the beaked redfish – a large-eyed, orange creature that typically grows up to half a metre long and lives for about 60 years. It has come to epitomise just why Russia ranks so poorly on the Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing Index – second-worst out of 152 countries in 2021.
Until recently, the beaked redfish was hunted widely in the Irminger Sea. Every three years, scientists from Iceland, Germany and Russia surveyed the state of the two stocks in the Irminger Sea, and in 2020, they concluded the redfish population was declining rapidly.
As a result, the International Council of Exploration of the Sea (ICES) – a regional fishery advisory body based in Denmark – recommended that all fishing stop. Almost all the countries and economic zones that caught redfish – the EU, UK, Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands and Greenland – complied. All but one.
Russia categorically refused to stop catching redfish in international waters. It told the members of the countries that hunt redfish – known as the the North-East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) – that it rejected the evidence, didn’t agree that there were two stocks and said it had conducted its own “serious scientific research” in 2021 (twice, it claimed), which “proved the reliability of its stock assessment results”.
When asked by the Guardian to provide these results, the Russian Federal Research Institute Of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO), which made the claims, said to request the data from ICES. However, the report from the ICES working group noted that members felt the Russian approach to assessing stocks was not “sufficiently documented”. Nor, according to an EU representative, did it offer the NEAFC negotiations any scientific evidence for its position.
Figures show that Russia, which was suspended from ICES activities in March 2022 because of the invasion of Ukraine, continues to catch redfish at worryingly high levels. In 2017, before ICES recommended all fisheries cease, Russia caught 24,361 tonnes of redfish. In 2021, after other countries had stopped fishing, it still hauled in nearly 22,000 tonnes.
Russia is not legally bound to follow the NEAFC’s decisions. The group’s members meet annually to discuss how to manage shared stocks, but any nation can protest against the quotas and simply catch as many fish as it wants.
Some states already do this with other species, such as herring, mackerel and blue whiting. Even when they agree about total catch allowance, members often quarrel over who gets what share – so they all set their own quotas that, combined, exceed the overall limit.
But they usually all agree on the science, even if they cannot agree on how to share stocks. This is why the redfish case different.
“Russia has, for a number of years, simply not been willing to accept the best available scientific advice [on redfish],” said Iceland’s foreign ministry representative on this issue at the NEAFC, Stefán Ásmundsson.
According to Kristján Kristinsson, a biologist at the Icelandic Marine and Freshwater Research Institute, relatively little is known about redfish populations in the Irminger sea. They arrive in April to give birth, but no one knows where from, or where they go when they leave again in early June.
What scientists do know is that redfish mature at a snail’s pace. After mating, the females carry eggs for as long as six months before releasing live young into the water. Those juveniles then need 10 to 15 years to reach reproductive age.
That makes the redfish extremely sensitive to overexploitation. Scientists fear the stocks aren’t being replenished with enough young fish. “Every fish is going to be fished eventually,” says Kristinsson.
The general secretary of ICES, Alan Haynie, is also concerned. “Simulations show that even at the present low-catch levels, there is a high probability that the pelagic redfish stock will not recover over the next decade,” he says.
There is also a particular technique for catching redfish that worries scientists, one that takes advantage of the redfish’s schooling mentality. The most valuable fisheries are on the border of the Icelandic economic zone – in the Reykjanes Ridge, part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Here, fishers used to queueto hit a redfish school, with trawlers from different countries waiting their turn.
The fact that redfish gather in such numbers means Russian trawlers could enjoy a strong haul, making it look as though stocks are buoyant when they are not. “Even though they [Russians] are fishing and it’s still profitable, they might be fishing the last school,” says Kristinsson.
Ásmundsson says it is frustrating for Iceland to stop fishing redfish in its own back yard while Russia is undermining the effort.
“For us, it is a very big issue,” Ásmundsson says. “It has a very great effect on a fish stock that is, to a very large extent, within Icelandic national jurisdiction.”
The EU has pushed back against Russia. Last year, it suggested banning all vessels with redfish from ports, and forbidding transhipment (loading them to other cargo ships). This would make Russian fishing more difficult by preventing trawlers from offloading their catch.
However, while Iceland and the UK supported the EU’s recommendation – Russia voted against – Norway and the Faroe Islands abstained, potentially allowing Russian redfish vessels to use their ports and conduct transhipment in their waters.
A Norwegian representative said Russia had simply “used its legal right to object”, adding that countries should “discuss conditions for an objection … as it sometimes seems to be too easy to object just because you disagree”.
The Faroe Islands took a similar stance, declaring they were concerned about continued Russian redfish fisheries but opposed the EU’s method of preventing them, and arguing that “conservation disputes” should be settled through dispute settlement mechanisms at regional fisheries management organisations – which the NEAFC doesn’t have – or under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Redfish is not the only troubling Russian fishery. Others are red king crab and pollack, says Sally Yozell, a senior fellow and director of environmental security at the US thinktank the Stimson Center.
Russia also appears to be evading sanctions slapped on it due to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Even though the US, EU and UK have banned or imposed high tariffs on Russian seafood because of the war, the fisheries remain active and apparently profitable – partly because the fish is often processed in other countries, such as China and South Korea, where the product’s country of origin are relabelled. This allows the fish to escape sanctions or tariffs – a policy Yozell has been lobbying to change.
“Those countries in Asia that have not stepped up to be more supportive in the sanctions against Russia, as it relates to the Ukrainian war, really need to be taken a little bit to task,” she says.
Other countries could also do more to stop Russian ships using their ports. While the core of Russia’s fishing takes place in its own waters, it maintains agreements with several countries, including Norway, South Korea, Japan and the Faroe Islands, explains Dr Marla Valentine, illegal fishing and transparency campaign manager at conservation group Oceana.
“It’s a huge problem that we’re not effectively able to ban Russia from visiting ports where their vessels are able to be serviced, or take on supplies or offload their catch. They’re still able to use ports throughout parts of Europe and in Asia. And that makes it very hard to crack down on their fishing operations,” she says.
In a statement, the VNIRO representative for Russia said that even though the country did not agree with the scientific advice, it would not fish beaked redfish in 2023 “as a gesture of goodwill”. Until – and if – its gesture of goodwill happens, Russia’s actions could have dire consequences for the species.
Russia is not alone in overfishing, but it is targeting some of the most sought-after seafood, which is already under intense pressure, says Valentine. “Some of their primary targets are pollack and red king crab. And both of those are incredibly valuable fisheries,” she says.
“There’s heavy pressure, not just from Russia but several countries on these fisheries. If everyone else is playing by the rules, and Russia is not, then you get these fisheries that could collapse.”
