2.4 



LITHUANIA 



Lithuania is the largest of the three Baltic countries that became independent from the Soviet 

 Union in 1991. The Lithuanian fishing industry was part of the centrally planned economy, 

 directed by the Soviet Ministry of Fisheries in Moscow, and its fishing fleet was sustained by 

 the Soviet network of fishery support vessels and representatives in foreign ports. Lithuania now 

 has to secure access to fishing grounds in foreign 200-mile zones itself and can no longer rely 

 on cheap, subsidized Soviet diesel oil and the domestic Soviet sales network which previously 

 sustained them. The transition from a command to a free-market economy has been exacerbated 

 by the new political situation and the need to reorganize the fishery administration. The 

 Lithuanian fishing fleet has 209 vessels with a total of 449,000 gross registered tons (GRT); its 

 capacity exceeds Lithuania's fishery resources. 



CONTENTS 



I. Background 67 



II. Fishing Fleet 68 



A. High-seas Fleet 68 



B. Fleet Reduction 73 



C. Jiua State Fishing Company 73 



III. Fishing Ports 74 



IV. Fisheries Catch 75 



V. Fishing Grounds 75 



VI. Fisheries Administration 76 



VII. Bilateral Agreements 76 



VIII. Outlook 77 



Sources 78 



Endnotes 79 



Appendices 81 



Bordering in the north on Latvia, it shares the 

 I. BACKGROUND shallow Kursiu Marios (the Bay of Kursk) 



with the Russian Kaliningrad enclave in the 

 Lithuania is the largest and the most south. The population of this southernmost 

 populous of the three Baltic states. With a Baltic state is 3.7 million inhabitants, 

 land area about the size of West Virginia 



(65,200 square kilometers), its window to the In 1990, the high-seas fishing fleet of 153 



Baltic Sea is small - 40 kilometers.' vessels landed 326,000 metric tons of fishery 



67 



