SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton - July 8, 2010 - Norway has always had a schizophrenic relationship to its king crab fishery. King crabs were introduced to the Barents sea by the Russians over 50 years ago, and they are regarded as an invasive species and environmental hazard by Norway. Meanwhile the Russians have developed a successful Barents Sea king crab fishery. In Norway, inshore fishermen were limited in how many crabs they could land, and total inshore catches were about 1000 tons. Most boats had very small total quotas. However, outside of the inshore zone, a free commercial fishery developed, and last year harvested about 4,000 tons. Innovation Norway, a state sponsored investment agency, has spent between 300 million and 400 million kroner ($47 million to $62 million) mostly in loans to fishermen who wanted to gear up and pursue the commercial fishery in the 'free' zone. These vessels were by and large specialized crab vessels. In 2008, a five year agreement was announced by the fisheries ministry that fixed the boundary between the inshore king crab zone, subject to strict regulation, and the offshore zone, where fishermen could catch whatever they could. This was the basis for some of the Innovation Norway loans. Now, 2 years later, the fisheries ministry is changing the rules, and moving the boundary of the regulated zone much farther offshore. The rule change could result in a decrease of just over 80 percent of the catch. While quotas in the quota-regulated zone are around 1000 tons, last year about 4,000 tons were landed from the free zone. Now most of those catches from the free zone will disappear, because the boundary has been pushed practically out of the range of crab, say the fishermen. As a result, an association of 20 fishing boat owners and four crab receiving companies are now warning of a lawsuit against the state. The reason is a strong restriction on the free fishing of king crab outside Finnmark. Participants came from Sogn og Fjordane in the south to Finnmark in the north. The Norwegian Fishermen's Association has asked their attorneys Stale Helles¿e to be available to the plaintiffs, but the Fishermen's Association itself has not formally joined the lawsuit. The reasoning by the fisheries department is that they want to see total eradication of king crab from Norwegian waters, but in the commercial fishery, fishermen do not land smaller size king crab, while in the inshore fishery, they are required to land all that they catch. As long as the goal is to get out of this crab species from Norwegian waters, therefore, the researchers concluded that it must be removed geographically and in total. With profitable fishing of large crabs, the development could lead to fishermen only to sell the big crabs for a good price, while the state must pay to have removed the little ones. Fisheries minister Lisbeth Berg-Hansen says that the fishermen makes it worse for themselves by fishing at the pace they are now doing and just taking the big crabs. The result is that no one wants to fish more and 'we have to pay fishermen to take up the crab instead'.