- And of course it got away. A typical fishing tale.
If you know someone into fishing, you’ve heard a story of the big one that got away. And if you’re into fishing yourself, you’ve told that story.
But no matter what, that catch is a small fry compared to what a bunch of Norwegian fishermen recently caught.
They netted a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine.
The crew of a small Norwegian fishing boat was checking their nets in the Norwegian Sea when they suddenly got a bizarre call. On the other end of the line was the U.S. Coast Guard, which informed them that one of the Navy’s subs had gotten tangled in their net.
Of course, the net wasn’t designed to catch anything the size of a submarine, so the Coast Guard representative informed the fishermen that the net had been destroyed. Fortunately, the Navy is looking to replace the accidentally ruined net.
But hey — at least the crew will now be able to trump any tall tale about the one that got away.
Hello, You Caught Our Sub
The incident happened on November 11 in the waters of the Norwegian Sea, west of the city of Tromsø. At the time, the small 32-foot-long fishing vessel Øygutt was out and about checking its nets.
“We had just emptied the nets and put them out again, and were on our way back to shore at Sommarøya, when we were called by the U.S. Coast Guard,” the Øygutt’s captain, Harald Engen, told NRK Troms.
The fishing vessel’s crew of dashing young fishermen, all in their 20s, were understandably puzzled as to why the Coast Guard was calling them. After all, they were quite a way away from American waters.
Yet, the call wasn’t about where Øygutt was. Instead, it concerned what their nets had just caught.
As it turned out, the fishermen had just snagged USS Virginia.
The nuclear-powered, cruiser missile-armed submarine had been cruising near the surface when it had accidentally gotten tangled in one of Øygutt’s nets. It had dragged the net out to the sea for two nautical miles before its crew realized what had happened.
Now, the net wasn’t a flimsy little thing. It was designed to catch halibut, which can weigh more than 100 pounds.
That said, a nearly 380-foot-long nuclear submarine is still bigger than any halibut that ever lived. So, the Coast Guard informed Øygutt that there wasn’t much left of the net.
That’s especially because the Coast Guard had to sail out to help USS Virginia’s crew cut the net off the submarine.
Losing a fishing net of this caliber is no small deal, as they can cost more than $4,500. Fortunately for Engen and his crew, the Coast Guard said they’re looking into reimbursing them for the loss.
Engen bears no grudge, though. If anything, he now has an unbeatable fishing story to tell.
“I know about other vessels that have sailed over fishing nets, but no one out here has ever heard about a submarine doing so,” he said.
A More Hostile Encounter
But why was the U.S. sub sailing by Norway anyway? Well, that has to do with a country Norway shares land and maritime borders with.
Namely, Russia.
Russia has recently started new, modern submarines that are extremely quiet. That makes tracking them from far off incredibly difficult, so the U.S. Navy regularly sends submarines to its fellow NATO country’s waters to keep an eye on the Russians.
That said, it’s not just Russian submarines that sail in the area. A couple of months earlier, another Norwegian fishing boat had a run-in with a conventional, surface-bound Russian warship.
On September 12, the vessel captained by Øystein Orten was fishing in the waters near the Norwegian-Russian maritime border, when the destroyer Admiral Levchenko suddenly pulled up. The warship blasted its horn and told the fishing vessel to get out of the area.
Now, the Russians weren’t just trying to show up. The Russian Navy had informed Norwegian authorities that they intended to conduct live-fire exercises in the region, and that put Orten’s crew at risk.
Orten first tried telling Admiral Levchenko (that’s still the ship, we don’t know who was commanding it) that they had longlines in the water and couldn’t leave. In response, the Russian destroyer reportedly fired a warning shot into the sea.
At that point, Orten decided his lines weren’t worth it and pulled away.
The Bigger Soviet Catch
Funnily enough, although Engen said no one has heard of a submarine being caught in fishing nets, this isn’t the first time it has happened. In 1984, a Norwegian trawler also caught a sub.
That time, however, it was a Soviet one. And it was even bigger than the USS Virginia.
This one was a 240-foot diesel submarine. After getting caught in the trawler Bentin’s nets in international waters, the Soviet crew attempted to break free for 30 minutes while staying underwater.
At that point, they decided they needed help and pulled to the surface — still wrapped in the net. There are no reports about how embarrassed the Russian crew was, but we can make some guesses.