The crew on board a Norwegian trawler fishing in Arctic waters found a human body snagged in its nets when they pulled them up on Thursday. The vessel immediately headed for the mainland of Northern Norway to turn over the body to authorities.
“We thought at first that there were some old clothes lying back there in the nets,” Kjetil Ervik, skipper of the fishing vessel Remøy, told state broadcaster NRK. “When we took a closer look, we could see that there were parts of a person in the clothes. We stopped up, and packed in the body.”
Ervik, an experienced skipper, said it was an “uncomfortable” experience that he’s never had before. He notified police in Tromsø, where attempts would be made to identify the body that was partially decomposed. It was expected to take another full day before the vessel would arrive in Båtsfjord on Norway’s far northern coast, from which the body would be sent to Tromsø.
Karl Erik Thomassen, operations leader for police, said they were no reports of any Norwegian citizens missing in international waters southeast of Svalbard where the body was snared. The area borders on Russian territory in the Barents Sea.
newsinenglish.no staff
