Photo 2. Bulgaria. Large refrigerated transports of the SIBIR class (5,000GRT) built in the USSR, carry 

 fishery products to Bulgarian home ports. 



modern stern factory trawler, the Feniks, built 

 in 1988 in an Ukrainian shipyard. 



III. HIGH-SEAS CATCH AND GROUND S 



Bulgaria's fishing industry is dominated 

 by high-seas fisheries (appendix 5). The 

 Bulgarian fisheries began to develop in the 

 early 1960s when the communist countries, 

 inspired by the Soviet example, planned a 

 major expansion into the world's oceans to 

 provide the domestic population with highly- 

 prized Atlantic species, and create additional 

 occupations in an economic system where full 



employment was peremptory. The expansion 

 was facilitated by the fact that most countries 

 at that time claimed only the traditional 3-mile 

 fishery limits. Since most of the demersal 

 fishery resources, and many pelagics, dwell 

 on the continental shelves, the extensions of 

 fishery limits to 12 miles in the late 1960s, 

 and to 200 nautical miles from 1975-77, 

 spelled trouble for the future of Bulgarian 

 high-seas fishing operations. The country's 

 fishery officials and diplomats had to secure 

 access to the fishing grounds where the 

 Bulgarian fishermen had previously fished 

 freely. This access, was increasingly denied 

 over the years by the developed countries 



190 



