380 
but delivered only a trickle ($1.8 million). The chief protagonist of 
the Peruvian-Soviet fisheries cooperation, General Vanini-Tantalean, 
is under arrest accused of corruption. 
The Soviet fisheries catch in 1975 amounted to an estimated 10.3 
million metric tons, or close to 15 percent of the world’s catch. 
Only a decade earlier, in 1965, this percentage was one third smaller 
(9.5 percent). Since most of the Soviet fisheries expansion after 1965 
occurred in the waters adjacent to the developing nations of Asia 
and Africa, the Soviet fishing fleets are thus in direct competition 
with rapidly developing fishing industries in those countries. The 
realization of this fact by developing nations has given an added 
impetus to the movement to extend fishery jurisdictions as far as 
possible: many African countries have unilaterally extended their fish- 
ing limits to 30, 50, even 200 miles, and others are preparing to 
claim the 200-Mile Economic Zone, which would give preference 
to nearby coastal states in the harvesting of fishery stocks within 
the zone. This action could be taken either unilaterally, or in unison 
with the current United Nations’ Law of the Sea (LOS) Conference. 
Soviet fishing off Latin America is practically non-existent. Most 
countries in South America already claim a 200-mile fishing limit, 
or even a 200-mile Territorial Sea (and thus full sovereignty), and 
the U.S.S.R. has by and large respected these limitations. In 1966-67, 
an attempt was made by the Soviet Fisheries Ministry to enter the 
virgin Patagonian hake fisheries off Argentina. However, this 
‘“‘invasion”’ was so clumsy and so devoid of any feeling for Argentine 
sentiment that it provoked an almost immediate extension of Argentine 
fishery limits to 200 miles. The Soviet catches from the Patagonian 
Shelf, which increased from zero to almost 700,000 tons in 3 years, 
were reduced to zero again by 1969. 
The Argentine episode brings to mind another extension of fishery 
limits which was directly caused by the predatory behavior of the 
Soviet fishing fleets. In April 1966, the Soviet Far Eastern Fisheries 
Administration began an intensive fishery for hake off the U.S. Pacific 
Northwest coast (the states of Washington and Oregon). Without any 
prior warning or announcement, the number of Soviet vessels in- 
creased daily until, a few weeks later, almost 120 large and medium 
trawlers and support vessels effectively disrupted the operations of 
U.S. coastal fishermen, crowding them out of their traditional fishing 
grounds, causing damage to their gear, and overfishing the species 
on which their livelihood depended (Rockfishes). The U.S. Congress 
reacted with a fulminating speed and extended—to the great surprise, 
shock and chagrin of the Soviet Fisheries Ministry—the US. fisheries 
jurisdiction 9 miles beyond and contiguous to the traditional 3-mile 
fishing limits in October 1966. 
This expansionary drive of the Soviet fishermen could not be 
moderated by any advice the U.S. offered in friendly persuasion. The 
same policy was followed on the East Coast where, in 1965 and 
1966, the Soviet fleets overfished the Atlantic haddock to a point 
where the very existence of the species was threatened, causing a 
ban on fishing and the resulting serious economic dislocation of New 
England’s haddock fishing industry. 
In the next 10 years, the U.S.S.R. and its East European allies—East 
Germany, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania—overfished several species 
