The main nursery and feeding areas for Northeast Arctic cod are in the Barents Sea, in sea temperatures above 0 degrees C (south of the polar front). The main spawning areas are along the Norwegian coast north of 67°N, occasionally some spawning occurs south to 62°N. The main spawning period is March-April. Each mature female may produce between 0.5 to 10 million eggs per season. Eggs and larvae are pelagic and are drifting from the spawning grounds to the Barents Sea, where they as 0-group adopt a demersal behaviour in late autumn.
Fishery - all around the year
Over the last 60 years average annual has been 660 000 tonnes. The catch in 2007 was 487 000 tonnes. The cod fishery is conducted all year, but is most intense in the first half of the year, aiming at the migrating spawners and at immature fish that are feeding on spawning aggregations of capelin. In winter/spring the southern Barents Sea and coastal areas are most important, while during autumn the area along the polar front, like the Bear Island–Hopen area, is important. In the Norwegian fishery various gears are used, while other nations mainly use bottom trawl. In a typical year the Norwegian catch is made up of about 30% from bottom trawl, 30% from gill net, 15% from longline, 15% from Danish seine and 10% from hand line.
Regulations and by-catches
In addition to quota regulations there are regulations aiming at protecting young fish; minimum catching size (47 cm in Norwegian waters), sorting grid with minimum bar spacing in groundfish trawl, and minimum mesh size in trawl, Danish seine and gill net. If catches contain more than 15 per cent (by numbers) of undersized fish that particular fishing ground is temporarily closed. Discarding of commercial species is not allowed. By-catches of cod in other fisheries are covered by the total cod quota. By-catches of cod in the shrimp trawl fishery are minimised by use of sorting grid and by closing areas.
By-catches of other commercial species in the cod fisheries are landed and counted against the quota for each species. Due to the use of sorting grids and large meshes by-catches of non-commercial species are low, and mainly consist of dab, sharks and skates. By-catches of sea mammals are rare.
A 20 nautical mile zone around Bear Island and areas with corals are permanently closed for fishing.
Stock status and setting of quotas
The spawning stock is above the Precautionary Limit. Recent recruitments have been close to or below average. The fishing mortality has been rather high since the mid-1990s. However, it declined considerably from 2006 to 2007, and was in 2007 at the precautionary level (Fpa).
The Joint Norwegian-Russian Fisheries Commission has adopted a catch rule for setting annual total allowable catch of cod. ICES has evaluated the rule and concluded that it is in agreement with the Precautionary Approach. For 2004-2008 the quota has been set according to this rule. However, for 2009 the Commission set a quota of 525 000 tonnes, while the catch rule gave a quota of 473 000 tonnes.
Overfishing of the quotas has been a problem in recent years. Parts of the international catch control systems have not been fully efficient, and considerable amounts of unreported catches in excess of quotas have been revealed for the years 2002-2007. International effort is made to solve these problems, and the introduction of the port state control regime in the North Atlantic from 1 May 2007 onwards was probably the main reason for the strong decrease in unreported catches from 2006 to 2007.