The rapid Soviet expansion southward is 

 evident from these statistics: in 1950, the 

 Soviet fishermen harvested fishery stoclcs at 

 the average distance of only 200 miles from 

 the Soviet coast. Fifteen years later in 1965, 

 the Soviet fleets fished almost 1,700 miles 

 from the native shores, while by 1970 this 

 distance was extended to over 4,000 miles." 

 Geographically, Soviet high-seas expansion 

 was first directed towards the Atlantic. By 

 1956, Soviet vessels were fishing off the 

 Newfoundland shores; by 1961, their 

 operations extended to the Georges Bank off 

 New England (where they surprised President 

 Kennedy by fishing within sight of his home 

 at Hyannis just outside the 3-mile territorial 

 sea limit). In the following year, the Soviet 

 fishing fleets appeared in the Caribbean 

 heightening the already strong anxieties of the 

 American public and government. 



The second important innovation was 

 the adoption of the flotilla fishing. The 

 Soviets adopted it after studying Japanese 

 fishery operations. The idea was that a fleet 

 of fishing vessels operating far from its 

 homeport should be able to remain at sea for 

 extended periods of time to reduce the costs 

 of transit to and from the grounds. The 

 vessels must be supplied with fuel, water, 

 salt, food, fishing gear, and maintenance 

 facilities, while the fishermen must be 

 provided with hospital and medical care. The 

 Soviets called such flotilla operations 

 "expeditionary fishing". A fleet of 30 to 40 

 large stern factory trawlers was managed by 

 the chief of the fleet {nachalnik flota) , whose 

 headquarters were aboard a large base ship. 

 He was in daily contact with the captains of 

 his vessels by radio. The mothership 

 received the catch from the trawlers, 

 processed it, and passed it to refrigerated fish 

 carriers for transportation to homeport. The 

 nachalnik' s mothership was supplied with fuel 



and other needs by tankers and cargo ships, 

 and distributed these supplies among the 

 vessels which it serviced. It also had a 

 hospital and dental services. 



B. High-seas Fleet 



The Russian fishing fleet consisted of 

 2,754 units having a total of over 6 million 

 gross registered tons in 1993 (table 1). Of this 

 total, the 1,999 units in excess of 500 GRT 

 were high-seas vessels, and the remaining 755 

 units operated in coastal waters. The gross 

 tonnage of the coastal fleet represented only 

 3 percent of the total tonnage of the entire 

 Russian fishing fleet. 



The total number of Russian fishing 

 vessels, enumerated by the U.S. Office of 

 Naval Intelligence, is almost identical with the 

 number of "Soviet" vessels registered in June 

 1992 by Lloyd's of London (appendix 1). 

 This would be understandable except that the 

 Lloyd's number supposedly also includes the 

 Ukrainian, Georgian, Estonian, Latvian and 

 Lithuanian vessels. That being the case, the 



total number should be much larger, probably 

 by about 1,000 units. 



Lloyd's data, although seemingly 

 unreliable, are interesting in that they give a 



96 



