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nations counterparts (Hersoug, 2005). Still other nations, for example Canada, could not make this
transition due to a number of domestic factors, most notably a certain kind of resistance to new
technology by Canadian fishermen (Balcom, 1996; Canada. Dept. of et al., 1987). The modernization
in nations like Iceland and Norway became mainly possible as the opening of the markets of the
traditional distant-water fishing nations for fish imports, markets that were widely closed to imports
due to various mechanisms of protectionism up until then, provided such positive economic returns
for the fisheries of the coastal nations of the Arctic and the sub-Arctic that the technological change
could be sustained. In addition, new actors like the government-owned Greenlandic fishing fleet
successfully entered the markets. Despite the fact that the fishing vessels employed by the domestic
fishing fleets of the Arctic- and sub-Arctic nations during the 1980s and 1990s were smaller in size
than the vessels typically used by the distant-water fishing fleets during the 1960s and 1970s, the
vessels had a very similar level of technology or even surpassed them. Electronic fish finding
equipment, mid-water trawls, onboard automated processing equipment etc., quickly became the
standard for the trawlers of the Arctic and sub-Arctic coastal nations. In fact the technological lead
for research and development of fishing technology and fish processing equipment moved from
places like Bremerhaven to places like Reykjavik (International conference on fishing vessels,
fisheries, & Royal Institution of Naval, 2005).
But of course the main markets for fish caught on Arctic and sub-Arctic fishing grounds remained
widely the same, meaning the European and North American markets. The development described
up to now might be summarized mainly as a move of the profit-centers from places like
Bremerhaven, Cuxhaven, Grimsby, Hull and Gloucester, MA to northern Norway, Iceland and
Greenland.
For the coastal population of the Arctic the situation remained largely unchanged, as it was still the
heavily industrialized trawlers that were utilizing the fishing grounds off the coast, regardless of if
they were flying the flag of an Arctic or sub-Arctic nation or the flag of a distant-water fishing
nation. In fact the situation may have become even worse for the coastal populations of the Arctic,
as it was no longer the fisheries of a foreign nation that was responsible for the (over-) utilization of
the fishing grounds off their coast, but fishermen of their same nation. An international problem
had become a set of domestic problems for the Arctic and the sub-Arctic nations. During the
struggles on the extension of national fisheries limits or the exclusion of distant-water fishing fleets
from operations on the coastal fishing grounds of the Arctic and sub-Arctic territories, the Arctic
and sub-Arctic nations were kind of united by fighting a common enemy, a.k.a. the highly
sophisticated fishing fleets of the industrialized European fishing nations. Now, it had become a
struggle between those fishermen who had been able to modernize and build up export-oriented
fisheries comparable to the former distant-water fisheries, and those that were truly domestic and/or
local fisheries.
As the fishing pressure on stocks continued to increase, and importantly severe overfishing and
collapse of certain stocks became a reality, the struggles among the various fisheries continued as
well, but were no longer primarily a fight on the international stage, but rather in the parliaments of
the Arctic and sub-Arctic nations. With the disappearance of a common enemy, the differences