The Faroese freezer-trawler Skalaberg has been detained since mid-November at Murmansk, reports Menakhem Ben-Yami.
She was arrested by the Russian coastal border police on 19 November in the Barents Sea, and since then a whole saga has unfolded.
The six year old, 74.5m, 3.707 brt, 10,900h, Skalaberg, is considered one of the most advanced ships of her age in her class.She had been fishing in the Barents Sea and at the time of her detention had 600mt of frozen fish in her holds.
Skalaberg had two full quotas as her owners, the JFK Company of Klaksvik, Faroes, had sold their other ship the Sundaberg, and passed its quota to Skalaberg. JFK say that they’ve informed the Russian authorities on the increased Skalaberg’s quota, but reportedly there was a change in the authority responsible for controlling fishing operations in the Russian EEZ. The border police, now in charge, denied any knowledge of the quota shift and sued JFK for fishing in excess of quota and for transgressing area, demanding a 25,000,000 rubles fine and confiscation of both the vessel and the catch on board. The start of the court hearings was scheduled for 16 December.
In the meantime the Faroese broke off negotiations with the Russians respective of the 2010 fishing in its EEZ, which leaves 15 Murmansk-based companies with 100,000mt quota of mackerel and blue whiting as of 1 January, 2010 without access to Faroese fishing grounds, ports, etc.
The continuing saga involved diplomacy, as well as internal Russian politics. While the Danish Foreign Ministry intervened, the Murmansk Trawl Fleet appealed to the Russian government to sort the problem out. V. Sokolov, a high official in the top fisheries authority in the Murmansk Province contradicted the border police, saying that both parties agreed that Skalaberg hadn’t exceeded her quota and was not poaching. “The ship just violated the rules of crossing into the Russian EEZ”. Also high-level representative of the Murmansk fishing industry applied to Vladimir Putin asking him to forestall a looming fishing conflict. This seems to be a bizarre development, since for the last 32 year both countries maintained friendly fishing relations.
What adds insult to JFK’s injury is that Skalaberg was in fact already sold to other owners for some $40m and if JFK can not hand the ship over to its new owners as agreed, the buyers will have the option of dropping out of the deal.
