Fishermen pull up net to find dead body

Corpse discovered in area known as 'Smutthullett' or 'loophole' in Barents Sea

Fisherman found a corpse in the trawler net of their ship while travelling through the Barents Sea off the coast of Norway (Getty iStock)

A group of fishermen pulled up a dead body in the trawl net of their ship while travelling across the Arctic Ocean, police said.

The ship was in the Barents Sea, off the northern coast of Norway and Russia, when the fishermen made the discovery.

“We first thought there only were some clothes in the back of the trawl net,” Kjetil Ervik, the ship’s captain, told the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK.

“Then, when we made a closer look, it turned out to be parts of a person inside.”

The ship is now on its way to Norway’s mainland where the body can be identified, Troms County Police said in a tweet posted on Thursday.

Karl Erik Thomassen, a police spokesperson, told the Barents Observer that there are no Norwegians missing in the area.

The ship was sailing through international waters when the body was caught in its nets, in an area known as the “Smutthullett” (which translates as “loophole”).

The Barents Sea is divided between Russian and Norwegian territorial waters and contain 5‑13 per cent of the world’s untapped oil and 20-30 per cent of the world’s untapped gas.

Several people have gone missing in its remote waters in recent years, according to the Barents Observer.

This includes Dmitry Kravchenko, a snow crab fisherman serving on a Latvian trawler, who went missing in the Barents Sea last year.