History of the North Sea United Kingdom and Germany signed the Treaty of Heligoland. The Cod War of 1893 erupted between Denmark and Britain over fishing territories. Denmark declared a fishing territory of 13 nautical miles (24 km) around their shores which included Iceland and the Faroe Islands. Britain did not acknowledge this claim. Tensions in the North Sea were again heightened in 1904 by the Dogger Bank incident, in which Russian naval vessels mistook British fishing boats for Japanese ships and fired on them, and then upon each other. The incident, combined with Britain's alliance with Japan and the Russo-Japanese War led to an
Cod fisheries waters to the West of Scotland where cod has continued to decline. It is broadly accepted that the plan has been a failure and has not delivered its objective of recovering the cod stocks in these areas because of the plan’s over reliance on effort (days-at-sea) that created an indiscriminate ‘race to fish’ which in fact increased fishing mortality on the biomass for cod, on other demersal species and had a destructive impact on the benthic zone of the seabed where it is intensely fished. On the other hand, conservation initiatives undertaken by fishermen working in cooperation with government, such