Russia and Iceland strike fisheries deal

Russian and Icelandic officials met this week in Moscow to agree the terms of their 2019 fisheries agreement, referred to as the ‘Loophole Agreement’ after the area of international waters in the Barents Sea over which the original agreement was reached.
Under the terms of this year’s agreement, Icelandic fishing vessels can catch 6592 tonnes of cod in the Russian part of the Barents Sea, plus 1978 tonnes of other species, although the haddock catch is limited to 521 tonnes.
In return, Russia gets access to 1500 tonnes of mackerel and 2000 tonnes of blue whiting from the quotas set by Iceland, which can be taken in international waters.
The agreement was signed by the head of the Icelandic delegation, Jóhann Guðmundsson, director general of the Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture at the Ministry of Industry and Innovation, and the Russian delegation’s head, S Simakov, who heads the foreign affairs department at the Federal Agency for Fisheries.