A group of fishermen who travelled to a Norway coast to catch some halibut were stunned when their fishing net accidentally captured a US nuclear submarine instead.
Harald Engen, 22, captain of Øygutt – a 10 metre long fishing boat that the team took out to sea – said the group were called back by the Coast Guard after making their way back to shore, and were then told the shocking news.
“We had just emptied the nets and put them out again, and was on our way back to shore at Sommarøya when we were called by the Coast Guard on channel 16 on the VHF-radio,” Engen told NRK Troms. The incident happened just outside Malangen, west of Tromsø on the coast to the Norwegian Sea.
The Coast Guard said the submarine had sailed into the net and dragged it two nautical miles north where it was eventually cut off. While the fisherman, aged in their early 20s, lost thier net to deep ocean waters, they now have an amusing story to tell at the local pub.
The Virginia-class submarine managed to float into the fishing net north of the island of Senja on November 11. Engen said: “I know about other vessels that have sailed over fishing nets, but no-one out here have ever heard about a submarine doing so.”
The submarine was identified as the USS Virginia - a 115-metre-long nuclear-powered attack vessel, which have been surfacing more frequently in recent years outside Tromsø. The US Navy confirmed the incident involving the small Norwegian fishing boat through the Embassy in Oslo.
The submarine was found to have had part of the net trapped inside her propeller, likely when the vessel was still sailing at surface.
Close naval cooperation between NATO members means the alliance works to track Russian Northern Fleet’s submarines sailing out from the Kola Peninsula to the North Atlantic.
These newer Northern Fleet submarines are silent compared to older Soviet models and make more frequent journeys out from the Barents Sea to the west of North Cape, into the deeper Norwegian Sea - a growing concern for NATO.