complete. From various sources, however, 

 the authors have been able to piece 

 together an approximate picture of their 

 deployment. In 1990 and 1991, the 

 Georgian high-seas fleet was fishing in two 

 major areas: in the Southeast Pacific off 

 Chile and Peru and along the coasts of 

 West Africa. The effort was split about 

 evenly. 



It appears, however, that the Pacific 

 operations were discontinued after April 

 1992 when the trawler, Kolpasfievo, left the 

 area. In 1993, almost all of the known 

 vessels were fishing off the African coast. 

 Whether these vessels, on their return to 

 the Georgian ports, also fish in the Black 

 Sea could not be determined. An attempt 

 to diversify their fishing operations has also 

 been noted. For example, since February 

 1993, the trawler, Akhmeta, has been fishing 

 in the Persian Gulf, possibly under a joint 

 venture with one of the adjacent countries. 



The operation of the BMRT, Bratya 

 Stoyanovy, became known when a New 

 Zealand fishery enforcement patrol seized 

 the vessel sometime late in 1992 for fishing 

 in a prohibited area 25 miles off the 

 western coast of South Island. The vessel 

 was fishing together with an Ukrainian stem 

 trawler {Aleksei Slobodchikov) whose owner 

 had to post a bond of $NZ 2.5 million to 

 gain the trawler's release. The final 

 disposition of both cases is not known, but 

 the Bratya Stonyanovy continued fishing off 

 New Zealand throughout 1993 and was 

 reported there in October 1993. 



rV. FISHERIES ADMINISTRATION 



The Georgian Administration of Marine 

 Fisheries, also known by its former 



acronym, GRUZRYBPROM, was organized 

 in 1963 with headquarters in the Kolkhida 

 section of the port city of Poti. At first, its 

 vessels were small trawlers fishing in the 

 nearby Black Sea. When the Soviet Union 

 embarked on its ambitious expansion of 

 high-seas fishing in 1953, Georgia, like all 

 other Soviet republics, followed suit. 

 However, it was not until 1967 that the first 

 large stern factory trawler was purchased by 

 the Georgian fishermen, who then entered 

 the distant-water fisheries, primarily off 

 Africa and in the Northwest Atlantic. The 

 Georgian vessels were part of the 

 YUGRYBA expeditionary fleets and were 

 supplied with fuel, water, victuals, etc., by 

 baseships of that fleet. YUGRYBA's 

 vessels also helped the Georgian fleet 

 process landed fish and transport its 

 products from the fishing grounds. 



GRUZRYBPROM was administratively 

 responsible to the Southern Fisheries 

 Administration in Sevastopol, a part of the 

 Soviet Ministry of Fisheries, until December 

 1991, when Georgia left the Union of 

 Soviet Socialist Republics to become an 

 independent state. 



V. OUTLOOK 



The future of the Georgian fleet looks 

 exceedingly grim. Poti, the city where the 

 Georgian Marine Fisheries Administration 

 was headquartered and where most of the 

 high-seas fleet was based, was overrun by 

 the rebel troops of the former Georgian 

 President GAMSAKHURDIA on October 

 2, 1993. What happened to the fleet is not 

 known. In the north, the port city of 

 Sukhumi, the capital of the Abkhazian 

 Autonomous Republic, was overrun by the 



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