The three Baltic states have also 

 separately concluded bilateral fisheries 

 access agreements with the Faroe Islands 

 (with the consent of Denmark). The 

 agreements provide the Baltics with 1993 

 catch quotas totalling 28,000 t to harvest 

 blue whiting in the Faroese fishing zone in 

 exchange for giving Faroese fishermen a 

 catch quota of 12,000 t of various species. 



Neighboring Sweden also resumed 

 fishery relations with the Baltic states soon 

 after it recognized them as independent 

 states. The fishery administrators of 

 Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania signed a 

 quadripartite agreement with Sweden in 

 Stockholm at the end of January 1992. The 

 document defines the contested fishing 

 grounds in the coastal areas of the Baltic 

 Sea. An estimated 75 percent of fishery 

 stocks in the area will be managed by the 

 Baltic states.^ 



Another area where the Baltic states 

 have been able to obtain some fishery catch 

 quotas is in the Northwest Atlantic. The 

 fishing in this area is governed by the North 

 Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO), 

 which allocates the catch quotas to various 

 countries. During NAFO's Fourteenth 

 Annual Meeting in Dartmouth (Canada) in 

 September 1992, Russia, as the successor 

 state to the Soviet Union, received a 1993 

 allocation of 37,300 t of various species, 

 mostly redfish (27,000 tons). In bilateral 

 negotiations, following the conclusion of the 

 Annual Meeting, Russia transferred 12,000 

 t of its 1993 ocean perch (redfish) quota to 

 Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, with each 

 country receiving 4,000 tons. In September 

 1993, the Russian Federation was allocated 

 32,573 t of fish for the 1994 fishing year 

 including -- for the first time -- 5,000 t of 

 illex squid which can easily be sold for 



foreign currencies. The portion that will be 

 transferred to the Baltic countries will be 

 decided later in bilateral talks. 



A severe blow to the Baltic fishermen 

 was the moratorium on fishing within its 

 200-miles which Namibia declared in 1991. 

 A large proportion of their total catch came 

 from this area, regulated by the International 

 Southeast Atlantic Fisheries Commission. 

 The Namibian Government, however, has 

 recently announced that foreign vessels can 

 apply for fishing licenses in 1994, and it is 

 possible that some Baltic vessels may be 

 deployed there in the future. Other fishery 

 agreements and joint venture arrangements 

 that individual Baltic countries have 

 concluded, in addition to those mentioned 

 above, are enumerated and explained in the 

 body of the report under each Baltic state. 



B. Fishing fleets 



The capacity of the Baltic fishery fleets 

 greatly exceeds the current availability of 

 fishery resources. In mid- 1993, the Baltic 

 high-seas fishing and fishery support fleets 

 had a gross registered tonnage of 1,156,400 

 tons, or almost 97 percent of the entire 

 fishery tonnage (appendix 1). The 

 remaining 3 percent consisted of small 

 fishing vessels under 500 gross tons most of 

 which fished in the Baltic. 



Given the fact that high-seas tonnage in 

 the late 1940s was zero, one can see how 

 rapidly the Baltic fleets developed to reach 

 almost a quarter of the total fishery tonnage 

 of the former USSR, while the Baltic states' 

 population (8.0 million inhabitants for all 

 three countries) barely reached 4 percent of 

 the total Soviet population. 



As shown in appendices 1 and 2, the 



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