Industries and Fishing Corporation of 

 Monrovia, Liberia, from the Factorias 

 Vulcano and the Naval Gijon shipyards of 

 northern Spain. The first 2 trawlers, the 

 Sotrudnichestvo and the Stimul, were 

 delivered to Russia in December 1991. 

 Dantrawl A/S of Denmark fitted the 2 

 trawlers with Alaska pollock trawls newly 

 designed especially for these vessels.^* 



The 9th vessel (Vladimir Starzhinskiy) in 

 the series of 15 Spanish-built trawlers was 

 completed in May 1993, and the 10th vessel 

 {Mikhail Drozdov) was scheduled for delivery 

 in August 1993, when the 11th vessel 

 (Kapitan Nazin) was to be finished. The last 

 4 vessels are expected to be completed two at 

 a time and scheduled for delivery in January 

 and June of 1994.^' 



The largest Russian Pacific fishing 

 company, the Vladivostok Trawler and 

 Refrigeration Fleet Base (VBTRF) is to 

 receive 10 out of the 15 ordered trawlers 

 (including, the previously delivered Kapitan 

 Azarkin, Stimul, Sotrudnichestvo, Suverenitet, 

 Solidamost, Stanovlenie, and Sozidaniye) and 

 operate them in the Bering and Okhotsk 

 Seas.^ 



The Vladimir Starzhinskiy, was delivered 

 to the North-East Russia Marine Resources 

 Company based in Sovetskaia Gavan, 

 Khabarovsk Region. This company has also 

 ordered several refrigerated trawlers from a 

 shipyard in Barcelona."" 



The former USSR ordered 10 tuna seiners 

 (80 meters long) from the Astilleros de 

 Huelva Shipyard in southern Spain through 

 the Pythagoras Shipping Company of Liberia. 

 The first vessel was delivered in July 1991 

 and the last in December 1992. The first five 

 vessels (including the Tivela, Kaouri, 



Purpura, Tellind*^, and Pinna) pined Russia's 

 Kaliningrad-based fleet; the second five 

 seiners (Rodios, Gomer, Platon, Aristotel, and 

 Demosfen) are operating out of Vladivostok in 

 the Far East. They will mainly fish for tuna 

 in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans."*^ 



IV. CATCH 



The Soviet fisheries catch expanded 

 rapidly after Stalin's death in 1953, and, 

 fueled by massive investments in the fishing 

 fleet, exceeded 10 million metric tons (t) by 

 1976. After worldwide extensions of fishery 

 jurisdictions to 200 nautical miles in 1976-77, 

 the Soviet fisheries catch, much of which was 

 harvested in now foreign waters, decreased 

 for a few years. Assisted by profitable joint 

 ventures and useful bilateral fishery 

 agreements, Soviet fishermen continued to 

 expand their catch in the 1980s. In 1989, the 

 Soviet Union became the world's largest 

 fishing power (in terms of catch landed), 

 surpassing Japan for the first time. Soviet 

 fishermen landed 11.3 million t of fish, 

 shellfish, and other aquatic products in 1989. 

 This glory, however, was short-lived; in 

 1990, its was China that harvested the world's 

 largest catch. 



In the next few years, the Soviet catch 

 began to decline steadily by about one million 

 tons a year, so that by 1991 only 9.2 million 

 t were landed (appendix 9). 



In December 1991, the Soviet Union 

 dissolved and the catch is now being reported 

 to FAO by its former constituent republics 

 which engage in high-seas fishing: the three 

 Baltic states, Russia, Ukraine, and Georgia. 

 The FAO in Rome is reportedly trying to 



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