'They could be fishing the last shoal': Russia sparks international anger over redfish overfishing

The Irminger Sea near Greenland and Iceland is home to the beaked rockfish, a large-eyed orange creature that is typically up to half a meter long and lives about 60 years. It came to illustrate why Russia ranks so poorly in the Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing Index - the second worst out of 152 countries in 2021.

Until recently, beaked redfish were widely hunted in the Irminger Sea. Every three years, scientists from Iceland, Germany and Russia have studied the status of the two stocks in the Irminger Sea, and in 2020 they concluded that the redfish population was rapidly declining.

As a result, the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) - a regional fisheries advisory body based in Denmark - has recommended a halt to all fishing. Almost all countries and economic areas that have caught redfish - the EU, UK, Iceland, Norway, Faroe Islands and Greenland - have complied. All but one.

Russia has categorically refused to stop fishing for redfish in international waters. He told members of countries that hunt redfish - known as the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) - that he dismissed the evidence, disagreed on the existence of two stocks and said he had conducted his own "serious scientific study". research” in 2021 (twice, he claimed), which “proved the reliability of his stock assessment results”.

When the Guardian told him Asked to provide these results, the Russian Federal Government Fisheries and Oceanographic Research Institute (VNIRO), which made the statements, said it requests the data from ICES. However, the ICES working group report noted that members felt the Russian approach to stock assessment was not "sufficiently documented". According to an EU representative, it has also failed to provide the NEAFC negotiations with any scientific proof of its position.

Figures show that Russia, which was suspended from ICES activities in March 2022 due to the invasion of Ukraine, continues to catch redfish at worrying levels. In 2017, before ICES recommended a halt to all fishing, Russia caught 24,361 tonnes of redfish. In 2021, after other countries stopped fishing, she still transported almost 22,000 tons.

Russia is not legally bound to follow the decisions of the NEAFC. Members of the group meet every year to discuss the management of shared stocks, but any country can protest the quotas and simply catch as many fish as they want.

Some states are already doing this with other species like herring, mackerel and blue whiting. Even when they agree on the total catch allocation, members often argue over who gets what share - so they all set their own quotas which, combined, exceed the overall limit.

But they generally all agree on the science, even if they can't agree on how to share the stocks. This is why the case of redfish is different.