THE BARENTS SEA FISHERIES - NORWEGIAN RUSSIAN MANAGEMENT REGIME IN A NEW ENVIRONMENT

Since the introduction of 200-mile exclusive economic zones in the lat e 1970s, Norway and Russia/The Soviet Union have shared a common respo nsibility for management of the fish resources in the Barents Sea. At the moment, the major fish stocks in the area are in a favourable cond ition, partly due to a successful operation of the Norwegian-Russian r egime. However, in the last few years, new threats to the resource bas is have arisen. The article discusses various challenges to the curren t regime, concluding that it has dealt properly with the issues which fall within its competence. Above all, the control bodies of the respe ctive states have engaged in a fruitful cooperation within the scheme of the existing regime in order to cope with an extended Russian over- fishing of quotas. The focal point is, however, whether Russian author ities are in a state to implement the decisions taken in the joint for a. A danger exists that reports - in an old Russian tradition are adju sted to the image of ''how things should be'' rather than depicting th e real state of affairs. Another major challenge to the Barents Sea fi sh stocks is the unregulated fishing of third country vessels in the s o-called Loophole. Although this is a jurisdictional question being de bated within a UN context - i.e. in principle not an issue for the joi nt Norwegian-Russian regime - Norway and Russia have taken a common st and towards the third countries, thus expressing a shared responsibili ty for the state of the fish resources.