negotiated, are increasing rapidly and are 

 especially burdensome on the hard-currency- 

 strapped countries of the former Soviet 

 Union. Some of the past fishing practices of 

 Soviet fishermen have generated considerable 

 ill-will, especially in African countries. They 

 are equally wary when negotiating with the 

 successor states to the USSR. 



Of the greatest importance will be the 

 fisheries research inside the Russian 200-mile 

 zone which was neglected in the past. It is 

 this zone with its abundant resources that will 

 become the backbone of the Russian fishery 

 landings and solid research is needed to insure 

 its viability and continued maximum 

 sustainable yield. 



Russian exporters will have to carefully 

 cultivate foreign markets. In the past, only 

 the most valuable commodities were exported: 

 caviar, salmon, and crab products. Recent 

 privatization and the loosening of central 

 control has generated a veritable exodus of all 

 kinds of fishery products. Individual vessels 

 owners have been dumping their catch abroad 

 at low prices to obtain hard currency. These 

 practices have caused an international outcry 

 and led to blockades at fishing ports and the 

 destruction of imported commodities in 

 Western Europe and even in Poland where 

 local angry fishermen prevented Russian 

 trawlers from selling their cod at one quarter 

 of the local price. 



Russia's distant-water fleet, the largest in 

 the world in terms of gross tonnage, will have 

 to reduce the number of vessels considerably 

 to cope with the limited access to suitable 

 fishery stocks. Russia will probably continue 

 buying fishery vessels abroad, provided the 

 hard currency is available. In the past, 

 during the Soviet era, hundreds of vessels 

 were built in East Germany and Poland, but 



in the last 2-3 years, new additions to the 

 high-seas fleet have come mostly from West 

 European shipyards in Spain and Norway. 

 These are state-of-the-art vessels with the 

 modern equipment and fishing gear. 



Despite many negatives, Russia's fishing 

 industry has a major advantage: large and 

 prolific fishery resources in its Pacific and 

 Barents Sea bodies of water. Endowed with 

 skilled fishermen and adopting free market 

 methodologies, its future looks bright despite 

 current transitional difficulties. 



SOURCES 



FAO. Yearbook of Fishery Statistics: Catches and 

 Landings; Rome, various years. 



GLOBEFISH. "The Fishery Industry during the 

 Transition of the Former USSR to CIS," 

 FAO/GLOBEFISH Research Programme. Vol. 24. 

 Rome: FAO, 1993. 



Kravanja, Milan. "Soviet and Cuban Fisheries in tlie 

 Caribbean. " Published in: Soviet Seapower in the 

 Caribbean; Political and Strategic Implications, pp. 

 135-163. James D. Theberge, Ed., Praeger, New 

 York, 1972. (In cooperation with the Center for 

 Strategic and Inteniational Studies, Georgetown 

 University.) 



Kravanja, Milan. "Tlie Soviet Fishing Industry: A 

 Review". Published in: Soviet Oceans 

 Development. Prepared for die U.S. Senate 

 Committee on Commerce, 94th Congress, 2nd 

 Session: pp.377-462. GPO, Washington, D.C., 

 October 1976. 



Lloyd's Register of Shipping. Lloyd's Register of 

 Shipping Statistical Tables. London, various years. 



Lloyd's Register of Shipping. World Fleet Statistics at 

 31 December 1992. London, 1993. 



U.S. Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence, July 1993. 



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