rV. FISHERIES CATCH'^ 



Lithuania's high-seas fleet obtains some 

 90 percent of its catch in the international 

 waters of the Atlantic, and in the 200-mile 

 zones of Canada and the Faroe Islands. 

 Some fishing is also conducted off the coasts 

 of several West African countries, 

 presumably inside their 200-mile zones. The 

 1992 high-seas fisheries catch was 170,000 

 metric tons (t), down 48 percent below the 

 326,000 t catch in 1990. At its peak, the 

 Lithuanian catch was approximately 400,000 

 t annually. Much of the 1992 decline can be 

 attributed to the loss of access to fishing 

 grounds inside the 200-mile zones of foreign 

 countries that occurred as a result of 

 Lithuania's independence from the former 

 Soviet Union. 



An estimated 55 percent (170,000- 

 180,000 tons per year) of the Lithuanian 

 high-seas landings was originated in the 200- 

 mile zones of various coastal countries with 

 which the former Soviet Union concluded 

 bilateral fishery agreements. Among these 

 countries were: Angola, Argentina, Canada, 

 Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Nicaragua, 

 Norway, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.'* After 

 the dissolution of the USSR, its bilateral 

 fishing accords ceased to apply to the new 

 Lithuanian State as of the end of 1991. 

 Beginning in 1992, the Lithuanian 

 Government had to obtain permission of 

 coastal countries for access to their EEZ's 

 on its own. Given the initial nonexistence of 

 Lithuanian diplomatic missions in most of 

 the above countries, this proved to be an 

 arduous and almost impossible task. 



The annual onboard fish-processing 

 capacity of Lithuania's fleet is currently 

 reported to be 268,500 t; its onshore 

 processing capacity is 31,500 tons. 



Domestic demand approximates 65,000 t of 

 processed fish per year; the remainder of the 

 Lithuanian production - about 200,000 tons - 

 is exported mostly to Ukraine, Belarus, and 

 Russia, as well as to the East European 

 markets. The fish landed from operations 

 off West African and South American coasts 

 is occasionally sold on the markets of the 

 nearby coastal countries. 



The 1992 Baltic catch was 10,000 t, 

 which was over 44 percent less than the 

 18,000 t landed in 1990. Lithuania gets less 

 than 5 percent of its catch from the Baltic 

 Sea. 



V. FISHING GROUNDS 



The high-seas fleet operates mainly in 

 the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. The 

 distant-water fisheries in Antarctica and in 

 the southeastern Pacific have been 

 abandoned because the increasing cost of 

 fuel and the length of the trips made fishing 

 there unprofitable. 



The Lithuanian high-seas fleet also 

 operates in the international waters of the 

 Northwest Atlantic, beyond the Canadian 

 200-mile EEZ. The fishing in this area is 

 governed by the North Atlantic Fisheries 

 Organization (NAFO), which allocates the 

 catch quotas to various countries. During 

 NAFO's September 1992 Fourteenth Annual 

 Meeting in Dartmouth (Canada), Russia, as 

 the successor state to the Soviet Union, 

 received an allocation of 37,300 t of various 

 species, mostly redfish (27,000 tons). In 

 negotiations, following the conclusion of the 

 Annual Meeting, Russia transferred 12,000 

 t of its 1993 ocean perch (redfish) quota to 



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