Fishing is an inherently international business, and so fishers inevitably brush up against the lines of geopolitics. In recent years, Norwegian fishermen have defied Russian Navy vessels conducting exercises in Norway’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ). But now, Norway faces a particularly nasty piscatory threat, one that has been growing over many months: Russian fishers doubling as spies and saboteurs.
For decades, the international community has been trying to bring order to fishing, which is a multibillion-dollar industry that simultaneously feeds millions of people and threatens its own future if left unchecked. Overfishing has devastated marine life; waters that once teemed with fish now have just tiny fractions of the catch they once provided.
Since the oceans belong to no one, managing fishing stocks is a classic problem of the commons and a good indicator of the state of the international order. A 1946 convention brought some manner of order to whaling. The 1971 Ramsar Convention regulated wetlands. A 1980 convention regulated krill catches. In 1982, countries passed the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which is considered the constitution of the oceans and provides a framework for their governance. And a 1993 compliance agreement sought to tackle rule-breaking fishers’ practice of regularly reflagging their vessels.
Similar efforts have continued since then, with more conventions signed and others being negotiated. But something is changing: The global fishing order, like the postwar order in general, is deteriorating.
Recently, China’s vast and menacing long-distance fishing fleet has been picking the waters clean. Its 17,000 ships park themselves, blitzkrieg-like, just off countries’ territorial waters. When they depart a short time later, the trawlers leave behind a maritime environment so stripped of life that local fishers can say goodbye to feeding themselves and their families.
And off Norway’s coast, foreign fishers are making unwanted visits of a different kind. Russian fishers are not banned from Norwegian waters; on the contrary, Russia and Norway allow each other’s fishers to fish in their EEZs in the Barents Sea. Together, the two countries also operate the Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission, which sets the Barents Sea’s fish quotas each year. Last November, both agreed on this year’s fish quotas, the lowest in more than three decades. Declining fish stocks are an enormous worry, but, miraculously, the joint commission continues to function.
But all is not well. For several years, Russian fishing vessels have been behaving suspiciously in Norwegian waters. In April 2021, Russian fishing boats crossed an undersea cable off the coast of Norway multiple times—and when they left, the cable had been severed. In fact, a 3.6-mile chunk was gone. In January 2022, a cable linking Norway and Svalbard was damaged and went dark—just after Russian fishing boats had spent days crisscrossing it.
Since then, Norwegian authorities and journalists have witnessed all manner of mysterious visits by Russian fishing boats. They arrive in Norway’s EEZ, linger (usually on top of undersea cables or pipelines), and leave. They call at Norwegian ports despite having no business there, since they deliver their catch at Russian ports.
Investigative journalists at NRK, Norwegian public broadcasting, have documented how mysterious people board such boats in Norwegian harbors. They found that at least 50 Russian fishing vessels constantly appear and conduct mysterious business in Norwegian ports and waters. But the ships don’t just loiter in ports and on top of cables; they also appear near visiting NATO submarines, in oil and gas fields, and by naval training areas and strategic bridges. They even appear to seek weather refuge in areas where Norway and its allies conduct naval exercises.
Last summer, the Norwegian government had had enough. It announced that Russian fishing vessels will only be able to stay in Norwegian ports for five working days, after previously limiting them to three designated ports. The government also limited the areas of each port that Russian fishing boats could use and said it would introduce more rigorous checks on them.
The Kremlin was not pleased. “In the event that further unilateral restrictions will apply to the Russian fishing vessels’ access to ports in Norway are introduced, the Russian party reserves the right to suspend this protocol without regard to the deadlines set in §7 of the Rules of Procedure for the Norwegian-Russian Joint Fisheries Commission,” it said. In other words, if Norway tries to curtail espionage and subversion by Russian fishers, Russia will cancel its maritime agreement with Norway, which would trigger disorder in the Barents Sea that would end up harming both countries by potentially destroying fish stocks.
Such threats would make any government nervous, and Norway seems unsure how to tackle the dilemma. The new regulations “take care of both sustainable (fishery) management and better control in ports,” Norwegian Fisheries Minister Marianne Sivertsen Naess told the Barents Observer, but Russia is visibly ready to pounce as soon as Norway introduces further measures—or detains the crew of a fishing-cum-espionage ship. In another odd maritime twist, Russia recently launched a cruise route from its Arctic port of Murmansk to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. Traveling by ship allows passengers—who, on the ship’s inaugural journey, comprised a few Russians—to circumvent flights via mainland Norwegian airports. (Norway no longer issues tourist visas to Russians.) One wonders, though, what makes it so important for Russian tourists to visit Svalbard and for Ildar Neverov, who is the CEO of the Russian mining company Arktikugol and functions as Svalbard’s Russian leader, to receive them.
Europe is already feeling the pain. In May, the European Union sanctioned Norebo and Murman SeaFood, two of the largest Russian fishing companies that harvest in the Barents and Norwegian Seas. “Vessels owned and operated by Norebo JSC show particular movement patterns that are inconsistent with regular economic practices and fishing activities. The movement patterns align with malign objectives, such as repeatedly being in the vicinity of or loitering near critical infrastructure and military sites,” the EU explained, while Murman SeaFood’s Melkart-5 ship “has repeatedly shown untypical behavior inconsistent with its regular economic practices and fishing activities, including its presence in close vicinity to an ongoing NATO military exercise, and regular presence close to Norwegian critical infrastructure and military sites.”
Melkart-5 is one of the ships that repeatedly crisscrossed the Norway-Svalbard cable just before it suddenly malfunctioned. Ordinarily, Norway acts in lockstep with the EU, but if it implements this small part of the EU’s 17th sanctions package, Russia’s wrath awaits. Given Russia’s expertise in gray-zone aggression, the retaliation would be just below NATO’s Article 5 threshold.
Through Russia’s malice, Norway has to choose between its security and the health of marine life. A crumbling international order endangers not just the safety of humanity, but the agreements that keep a fragile and damaged global ecology intact.