In Poland, the high-seas fishing industry has better maintained its viability and, although the 

 catch has decreased somewhat and the high-seas fleet shrunk, it continues to maintain a powerful 

 presence on the world oceans. 



Supported by generous government subsidies, Polish shipyards, during the last four decades, 

 built several hundred large stern factory trawlers, both for the domestic high-seas fishing 

 companies and for export. This enabled Polish fishermen to expand their operations into the 

 world's oceans and their continuously increasing catch to peak at 800,000 metric tons in 1975. 

 One half of that total was contributed by distant-water fisheries. 



Following the 1976-77 extension of most coastal fishery jurisdictions to 200 nautical miles, 

 however, the problem of obtaining access to needed fishery stocks arose with unforeseen 

 consequences. The geographical expansion of Polish fishing was terminated and the ship- 

 building programs reduced. By the mid-1980s, the largest Polish fishery was located in the 

 international waters of the Central Bering Sea which contributed an increasing percentage of the 

 total catch. After an international moratorium on the Bering Sea fishery was adopted in 1992, 

 the large fleet of Polish stern trawlers moved to the international waters of the Sea of Okhotsk, 

 near Russia. Claiming that its Alaska pollock stocks are in danger of overfishing, the Russian 

 Federation began to exert heavy diplomatic pressure on the Poles, along with the Koreans and 

 the Chinese, demanding that they stop fishing in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Poles (and others) 

 refused, stressing that a fishery in international waters is not subject to regulation by coastal 

 states. In mid- 1993, after difficult negotiations, Poland and other nations engaged in the Sea 

 of Okhotsk pollock fishing agreed to decrease their 1993 catch by 25 percent compared to that 

 of 1992. The future of this fishery remains uncertain and with it the future of Polish high-seas 

 fisheries. The Okhotsk Seas fishery js the Polish high-seas fishery, contributing over 80 percent 

 of the total high-seas catch in 1992. If it loses this fishing ground, the Polish high-seas fleet will 

 have to rapidly find new resources, or, even more rapidly, reduce the number of its vessels. 



Poland has withdrawn from the 10 or more fishing grounds where it used to fish in the late 

 1970s and early 1980s. Only a small fishery for krill and limited and decreasing operations 

 around the Falkland Islands remain. These operations could not possibly support the substantial 

 Polish stern trawler fleet of 53 large trawlers. Faced with this difficult economic and political 

 problem, the Polish fishing companies began a forceful program of vessel reduction. During 

 the last 7 years (1985-92), the Polish companies sold 48 vessels with a total tonnage of over 

 85,000 CRT to fishermen from 13 countries. The reduction program continues. 



Polish high-seas fisheries are especially important because the Baltic Sea yields have been 

 decreasing steadily. During the last 15 years, the Baltic catch had decreased by two-thirds from 

 330,000 tons in 1975 to 104,000 tons in 1992. There is little hope for its rapid recovery. The 

 high-seas catch is thus important to the consumer and to the government. About 10 percent of 

 the distant-water landings are sold on domestic markets. The remainder, sold in foreign ports 

 or to international trading companies, brought US$ 250 million into the overall Polish foreign 

 trade account in 1991. By 1992, these hard-currency earnings amounted to only $150 milUion. 



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