harvested there only a decade ago (appendix 

 14). 



The remainder of the high-seas catch, 

 except for a negligible 1,000 t off New 

 Zealand, was the 17,300 t of krill landed in 

 the FAO statistical area 48, adjacent to the 

 Antarctic continent."^ 



The Polish high-seas fleet abandoned 

 many grounds that were fished a decade or 

 two ago. During the last decade, the Polish 

 vessels withdrew from fisheries off the West 

 African coast (Mauritania), off Canada, the 

 United States, Mexico, and other countries. 

 A short-lived fishery (1982-84) in the 

 southeastern Pacific, off Chile and Peru, was 

 discontinued for unknown reasons. 



IV. HIGH-SEAS FISHING 

 GROUNDS 



Polish vessels are concentrating their 

 fishing effort principally in the international 

 waters of the Sea of Okhotsk ("peanut hole") 

 and around the Falkland Islands in 1993. 

 This has been necessitated by the 

 denial of access to other 



traditional fishing grounds" , or 

 because these grounds have 

 become commercially unprofitable 

 (for example, the waters off 

 Mauritania and the fisheries on the 

 Newfoundland Shelf). '^ 



Southwest Atlantic (FAO 

 statistical area 41): The area 

 around the Falkland Islands has 

 been Poland's second largest 

 fishery (mostly for loligo squid) 

 since 1987, but the catch has been 

 declining steadily since 1983, a 

 bumper year when 348,000 t of 



fish was harvested. By 1992, the catch had 

 fallen to 42,500 t, a decrease of more than 50 

 percent from the 1990 catch figure (figure 



4).^« 



Northwest Pacific (FAO statistical area 67): 



From 1985 to 1986, the Alaska pollock 

 fishery in the international waters of the 

 Bering Sea "donut hole" contributed 

 significantly to Poland's overall fishing catch. 

 Heavy fishing in the 1980s by the Japanese, 

 Koreans, Chinese, and Russians, as well as 

 the Poles, however, depleted the Bering Sea 

 resources badly. '^ In the 1989, many Polish 

 trawlers began to shift their operations to the 

 Northwest Pacific and this was reflected in 

 the "donut hole" catch statistics (figure 5). In 

 1988, Polish fishermen caught almost 300,000 

 t of Alaska pollock in that area. By 1991 , the 

 Polish harvest was only 54,900 tons^*^'; in 

 1992, the Poles ceased fishing in the "donut 

 hole" altogether even before a 2-year 

 international moratorium on this fishery was 

 adopted. 



The majority of the Polish vessels, 

 displaced from the Bering Sea in 1992, 

 moved their operations to the international 

 waters in the central Sea of Okhotsk (the so- 



1,000 Metric tons 



1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 



Figure 5. Poland. Bering Sea "donut hole" catch, 1985-92. 



220 



