1990 when they began a steady decrease, 

 while the Black Sea fisheries have been 

 collapsing steadily, dropping to only 3,700 t 

 by 1992 (appendix 7). 



The Romanian high-seas fisheries urgently 

 need to diversify and find additional fishing 

 grounds. In the past, the country's biologists 

 conducted some exploratory fishing in the 

 Mozambique Channel off eastern Africa and 

 near the Island of South Georgia, but without 

 satisfactory results.'* The recent decision by 

 the Namibian Government to open its 200- 

 mile zone to foreign fishing on January 1, 

 1994, has potential for Romanian fishermen. 



V. FISHERY ORGANIZATION 



Romanian state-owned fishery companies 

 were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of 

 Transportation and Telecommunications until 

 1977 when they were placed under the 

 Ministry of Food and Agriculture. 



The Marine Fisheries Company of 

 Romania (IPO - Intreprinderea de Pescuit 

 Oceanic) is located in Tulcea, on the Danube 

 Delta, 60 kilometers from the Black Sea. 

 IPO is the only high-seas fishing enterprise in 

 Romania and owns the entire high-seas fleet. 

 The December Revolution brought managerial 

 independence to IPO. In 1990, its personnel 

 attempted to reorganize their enterprise to 

 improve working conditions, make it 

 profitable, and adjust to autonomy from 

 government control. 



Its vessels are largely aged and obsolete 

 and the least efficient need to be 

 decommissioned. IPO decided to concentrate 

 its resources on the utilization of its 20 

 supertrawlers (PROMETEI class), 15 of 

 which were built in the former East Germany 



with the newest 5 built in Romania itself and 

 are 100 meters long. Its other 20 trawlers 

 will be "cannibalized" for parts. To create 

 better conditions for its workers, the IPO 

 management will focus on the quality rather 

 than the quantity of its products in an effort to 

 retain the dwindling consumer market for 

 fishery products.'*^ 



VI. BILATERAL AGREEMENTS 



In January 1958, Romania signed an 

 agreement on cooperation in the Danube 

 fisheries with Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. The 

 Soviet Union, then the paramount political 

 influence in Eastern Europe, joined as a 

 signatory. A year later, in 1959, the USSR, 

 Bulgaria, and Romania concluded an 

 agreement on the Black Sea fisheries and 

 established a Commission regulating them. 



In July 1962, the Soviet Union, Poland, 

 and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) 

 signed in Warsaw an agreement on mutual 

 cooperation in the development of high-seas 

 fisheries. Romania and Bulgaria were co- 

 opted into the agreement and participated in 

 all annual plenary sessions, as well as in 

 technical committees and working groups. 

 Unlike Bulgaria, however, the Romanians 

 bought their first high-seas trawlers in 1963 

 from Japan rather than from the Soviet 

 Union. Whether the reason for this purchase 

 was technical/commercial, or political, is not 

 known. A glance at appendix 1, however, 

 clearly shows that, except for 2 fishery 

 transports in 1972, Romanian officials 

 preferred to buy their fishing and fishery 

 support vessels from Poland and the GDR. 

 Later, in the 1980s, they began to build both 

 types of vessels themselves. 



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