total, 79 were high-seas vessels, while 198 

 coastal vessels fished only in the adjacent 

 Baltic Sea, according to the Latvian Ministry 

 of Maritime Affairs/ In late July 1993, 

 however, the U.S. Navy listed only 223 

 vessels, with a total gross registered tonnage 

 (GRT) of over 510,000 tons, as being in the 

 Latvian fishing fleet registry (table 1). 



Table 1. Latvia. Fishing fleet, by selected 

 vessel capacity. 1993. 



Source: U.S. Navy. Office of Naval 

 Intelligence. 27 July 1993. 



Pholo 2. -Latvian fishermen operate 8 large autonomous stem 

 factory trawlers. 



companies, or their vessels, 

 privatization drive. 



under the current 



The 152 vessels above 500 GRT listed 

 in table 1 are not all fishing vessels; 7 of 

 them are specialized fishery vessels and 21 

 are large fishery support vessels. It is also 

 likely that some over 500-GRT-vessels are 

 operating in the Baltic Sea. (For vessel 

 names, class, GRT, country and year of 

 construction, see appendices 1 and 2.) 



UI. HIGH-SEAS FLEET DISPERSAL 



By June 1993, the Latvians had 

 deployed 31 of their high-seas fishing ves.sels, 

 mostly in the Atlantic. These trawlers are 

 based in the Latvian ports of Riga and 

 Liepaja. They are owned by the Riga 

 Trawler and Refrigeration Fleet under the 

 Director General Olgerts MAURINS, and by 

 the Liepaja High-seas Fishing Fleet under the 

 Director General, Dainis ENGELIS. Both 

 companies are owned by the Latvian 

 Government as no takers were found for the 



The high-seas fleet of Latvia was 

 deployed in the summer of 1993 in the 

 following fishing grounds and off the 

 enumerated countries: 



Northwest Atlantic: The largest Latvian fleet 

 (13 vessels) was fishing for ocean perch in 

 the international waters of the Northwest 

 Atlantic, beyond the Canadian 200-mile FEZ. 

 The fishing in this area is governed by the 

 Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization 

 (NAFO), which allocates the catch quotas to 

 various countries. During NAFO's September 

 1992 Fourteenth Annual Meeting in 

 Dartmouth (Canada), the quotas of the former 

 Soviet Union (FSU) were allocated as a block 

 quota to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and 

 Russia as the four countries were unable to 

 agree among themselves as to the percentage 

 of distribution. The block quota scheme was 

 to be fished as an "Olympic" fishery under the 

 NAFO rules for fishing "others" quotas. 

 Russia objected to this scheme and later filed 



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