support an informed judgment. In 1976, the 

 U.S. Congress requested from the National 

 Marine Fisheries Service a review of the 

 Soviet fishing industry, including an estimate 

 of the productivity of Soviet fishermen.^ The 

 conclusion of this report was most 

 unfavorable for the Soviets; it showed that 

 every high-seas country selected for the study** 

 had much higher productivity than the Soviet 

 Union. The productivity of the Norwegian 

 fishermen was 1 1 times greater than that of 

 Soviet fishermen; the U.S. fishermen 

 produced almost 6 times more for the same 

 gross tonnage, and Japan produced over 5 

 times more. While it could be argued that the 

 data for Norway and the United States, both 

 coastal countries with small total fishing gross 

 tonnage, cannot be easily compared with 

 those of the widespread high-seas Soviet fleet, 

 this argument could not be sustained vis-a-vis 

 Japan. The latter operated its vessels in a 

 manner not too different from that of the 

 Soviet Union. Both operated large flotillas of 

 fishing vessels, accompanied by motherships, 

 refrigerated transports, and other support 

 vessels to distant fishing grounds and both 

 used large stern factory trawlers extensively. 



The authors have tried to determine 

 whether the productivity of the current 

 Russian fishing fleet has improved over that 

 of the former Soviet fleet. 



In 1992, the Russian high-seas fishing 

 vessels, numbering 2,217 units'* with a gross 

 registered tonnage of 3,006,082 tons 

 harvested 5.8 million tons of fish and 

 shellfish. The same year, the combined high- 

 seas fleet of the European Community (EC), 

 numbering 591 vessels with 718,000 CRT 

 capacity landed 6,834,000 tons. A simple 

 calculation shows that while the EC catch per 

 one CRT equaled 9.5 tons, the Russian 



fishermen delivered only 1.9 tons for the 

 same one gross ton, or five times less. 



If we add to the Russian fishing tonnage 

 also the Russian fishery support tonnage (25 1 

 vessels with a gross tonnage of 1,454,099 

 tons), the productivity of the Russian 

 fishermen decreases further to 1.1 ton per 

 gross registered ton. 



As the EC has only a few fishery support 

 vessels"*, the latter figure is better compared 

 with the Japanese statistical data for the high- 

 seas fleet. 



In 1992, Japanese high-seas fishing 

 vessels numbered 2,689 units" with a gross 

 registered tonnage of 779,179 tons and 

 harvested 8.2 million metric tons of fish and 

 shellfish. The Japanese catch per one gross 

 ton of fishing fleet is thus 10.5 metric tons, 

 over 5 times more than the Russian catch. 



Adding the smallish tonnage of the 

 Japanese fishery support fleet (134 vessels 

 having 45,571 CRT), the picture becomes 

 even more favorable for the Japanese, whose 

 fishermen harvested 10.0 metric tons per 

 every ton of the fishery fleet.'' This was 9 

 times better than the comparable 1992 harvest 

 of Russian fishermen. 



These statistics are admittedly only 

 approximate'-', but they do give a good idea 

 of what the current fishery administrators will 

 be faced with when they try to bring the 

 Russian fishing industry up to world 

 standards. 



E. Ports of Call 



Operating far from their homeports, the 

 numerous Russian large stern factory trawlers 

 require special conditions for the 



99 



