12 BIOLOGY OF THE SEAS OF THE U.S.S.R. 



Table 1. Areas, volumes and depths of seas of the U.S.S.R* 



Area Volume Mean depth Greatest depth 



Name 10 3 x m 2 10 3 x m 3 m m 



Baltic Sea 386 33 86 459 



White Sea 90 8 89 330 



Barents Sea 1,405 322 229 600 



Kara Sea 883 104 118 620 



Laptev Sea 650 338 519 2,980 



East Siberian Sea 901 53 58 155 



ChukotskSea 582 51 88 160 



Bering Sea 2,304 3,683 1,598 4,773 



Sea of Okhotsk 1,590 1,365 859 3,657 



Sea of Japan 978 1,713 1,752 4,036 



Black Sea 423 537 1,271 2,245 



Sea of Azov 38 0-3 9 13 



Caspian Sea 370 77 197 980 



Aral Sea 64 10 75 68 



Total 10,644 8,285-3 



* Except for the Caspian and Aral Seas the data are taken from the Nautical Atlas, 

 Volume II, 1953. The greatest depths of Far Eastern Seas are according to the latest 

 Vityaz data. 



The Caspian, White and Barents Seas have been an area of Russian fishery 

 from ancient times. Fisheries were developed in the Azov and Black Seas 

 somewhat later. In the seas of the Far East they were developed most recently. 

 At present the u.s.s.r. occupies one of the leading places in marine fishery. 



Hence the investigation of the flora and fauna of the seas of the u.s.s.r. is 

 of exceptional interest. 



The Russian people, who for centuries had lived by agriculture, were drawn 

 to the sea at the time when antiquity changed into the Middle Ages. As early 

 as the fifth century military expeditions took the Slavs down to the Black 

 Sea. Two powerful states — Novgorod and Kiev — arose in the ninth century 

 on the Volkhov and Dnieper, along the great water route from Varangians to 

 the Greeks. Both states learned to use the water routes for trade and war alike. 

 A high nautical culture developed in Novgorod state through the centuries. 

 The Novgorod helmsmen ploughed, in their small boats, first the Baltic Sea, 

 and then, from the beginning of the twelfth century, the White Sea and the 

 Arctic Ocean. In the ninth and tenth centuries numerous Russian ships 

 sailed to Byzantium. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries men of Nov- 

 gorod and Kiev were good navigators. Marine communications with the west 

 became more lively under Ivan III : English trade ships 'opened' the northern 

 sea route to the White Sea in the middle of the sixteenth century. Venice led a 

 lively trade with the south of Russia through the Black Sea. At first Russia's 

 role was rather passive but, in the sixteenth century under Ivan the Terrible, 

 there awoke a new striving for marine frontiers and an active struggle for the 



