381 
(Pacific ocean perch, Atlantic mackerel, and others) and seriously 
threatened, Mid-Atlantic herring, Mid-Atlantic river herring, or 
alewife, Pacific halibut, etc.). 
This careless behavior of the Soviet fishing fleets led at first to 
subdued demands for an extension of the U.S. fisheries jurisdiction 
to 200 miles and, in the early 1970’s, to an avalanche of repressed 
sentiment which, sweeping aside Defense and State Departments ob- 
jections, resulted on January 29, 1976 in the Congressional passage 
of the 200-mile bill, named officially the Fishery Conservation and 
Management Act of 1976. 
The worldwide extension of fishing limits will severely dislocate 
the operations of the Soviet fishery fleets. A large percentage of 
the Soviet ‘“‘distant-water’’ catch comes from the coastal waters of 
West European, North American, Asian and African countries. This 
portion of the catch, which can be estimated at between 80 and 
90 percent of the total, will be unavailable to foreign fleets except 
by permission of the coastal countries. If “the past is prologue’’, 
such permission not only will be far below the present levels of the 
Soviet catches off foreign coasts, but will also be more costly to 
the Soviets. 
The Soviet fisheries hierarchy is well aware of the coming storm. 
In mid-1975, Minister Ishkov formed an LOS committee, chaired by 
his Deputy Fisheries Minister for International Affairs, Mr. Georgii 
Vladimirovich Zhigalov, a former fisheries official from Vladivostok, 
who has had vast experience in negotiating with foreign countries 
and settling conflicts between foreign and Soviet fishermen. A level- 
headed man with good common sense, Mr. Zhigalov will be hard 
put to find answers to the uncertain future which the Soviet fishermen 
face as the Law of the Sea Conference gets into the decisive and 
possibly final stages of its deliberations. (The Third Substantive Session 
of the Conference began in New York on March 15, 1976.) 
FLEET 
The U.S.S.R. has not supplied data (as far as is known) on the 
gross tonnage and the number of its fishing vessels to the Food and 
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) since 1956, 
when the buildup of its distant-water fishing fleets began seriously. 
This fact may indicate that the Soviet military (naval) establishment 
decided that such statistics are ‘sensitive’ information and should 
be “classified”’. 
Despite this Soviet secrecy, Western experts have a good idea of 
the size and comparative position of the Soviet fishing fleet. It numbers 
over 80,000 fishing vessels, most of which are small coastal craft, 
or even boats used in inshore and internal waters. 
A feeble effort to modernize the fishing fleet began during the 
1930’s, but the main thrust came after the Second World War—in 
the late 1950’s and after. The Soviet fishing fleet currently totals 
18,000 powered vessels, including medium side trawlers, stern factory 
and freezer trawlers, processing vessels, floating canneries, rescue tugs, 
research vessels, and various other fishery support vessels. The Soviet 
fleet accounts for about 25 percent of the world’s fishing fleet in 
terms of the number of vessels, but about 50 percent of the world’s 
