LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Barents Sea: Russian Arctica
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During the joint Norwegian-Russian survey on pelagic fish in the Barents Sea this autumn, the capelin stock was estimated at only 530 thousand tonnes, compared to 2.21 million tonnes in 2002. A sharp decline of this capelin stock has been observed earlier, both in 1984-1986 and in 1992-1994. There is reason to believe that such collapses in the Barents Sea capelin stock ... have taken place several times before.
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Oil exploration in the Barents Sea began in the 1970s. Discoveries were made on both the Russian and Norwegian sides. The first major producing field will be Snøhvit in the Norwegian sector. The largest discovery to date is the Shtokman field in the Russian sector. There is a boundary dispute between Norway and Russia, with the Norwegians favouring the Median Line and the Russians favouring a meridian based sector.
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During World War II the Barents Sea served as an important traffic route; it provided the only surface approach to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) from the west, when Mediterranean and overland routes were inaccessible. At present it forms the westernmost part of the 8,050-km (5,000-mi) seaway leading around the Russian coast from Murmansk in Europe to Vladivostok on the Pacific Ocean.
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Norwegian prime minister Jens Stoltenberg and Russian prime minister Mikhail Fradkov have reportedly reached a compromise to settle part of a long-running dispute between the countries over their Barents Sea border. At a meeting last Friday (8 June), the two prime ministers agreed to sign an accord that will define ownership of the waters off the coast of the Varanger peninsula in far north-eastern Norway. "We have agreed in principle to sign a deal on Varangerfjord within the next few days," Fradkov was reported as saying by Russia's Interfax news agency.
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The Russian negotiators claim this case has two “special circumstances” which should be taken into account in the discussions with Norway over the Barents Sea (Hagland, 1999: pp.28-29). First of all, in 1926 the Soviet Union decreed a “sector line” which stretches a line from the Soviets then-valid Western border to Finland and along the meridian up to the North Pole. This decree of 1926 was originally meant to clarify the sovereignty over certain islands in the sea within this area, and was not meant nor accepted as a delimitation of maritime boundaries. However, the Russians today still feel that this principle constitutes a historic precedence which should be taken into account. The other factor Russian negotiators have mentioned as a “special circumstance” is the difference between the two nations’ territorial land areas. In response to this claim, Norway argues that the delimitation must be based upon geographic circumstances without taking into account differences in population size, economic factors, or other unrelated issues.
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Many countries have launched scientific expeditions to the Barents Sea. The results of Norwegian, English, Swedish, and German expeditions were published in the western literature and became accessible to the scientists from the different countries. These papers are well known in Russia and are widely used by specialists in various fields of natural sciences. The materials by Russian scientists, in most cases, are published only in Russian, and are there-fore inaccessible to many English language readers. Therefore, information about the Russian expeditions to the Barents Sea will be provided in this section.
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Russian Arctica