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The Soviet Union has not decreased the rate of expansion of its 
fishing fleet up to this time. In fact, it has been announced that 
900 new fishing vessels and 70 refrigerated transports were added 
during the just completed ninth 5 Year Plan (1971-75). According 
to Western estimates, the U.S.S.R. presently deploys about 4,450 
high-seas fishing vessels. 
The attention of the Soviet Ministry of Fisheries is now being 
directed toward further modernization of the fleet and increased 
productivity of its fishermen. 
After the death of Stalin in March 1953, and the resulting interest 
in Western nonmilitary technological innovations, the Soviets obtained 
from the British the blueprint for one of the most brilliant inventions 
in modern fishing—the stern factory trawler. Lacking the necessary 
technology, the Soviet fishing vessel designers were unable to 
reproduce the vessel and the U.S.S.R. was forced to order her first 
24 stern factory trawlers from the Kiel Shipyards in West Germany. 
Once these were delivered, the U.S.S.R. began its own production 
(in the Nikolaev Shipyards on the Black Sea), and induced Poland 
and East Germany to follow suit. Soon all three countries began 
to mass-produce stern factory trawlers. Since most Polish- and East 
German-built trawlers went to the Soviet Union, the Soviets were 
able to expand their high seas fisheries rapidly. In the Atlantic, they 
were fishing off Canada (Newfoundland Banks) by 1956, off New 
England (Georges Bank) by 1961, and by 1962 their vessels were 
sighted in the Caribbean. 
Today, almost 780, or about 15 percent of all Soviet high seas 
fishing vessels, are large stern factory trawlers constructed domestically 
or bought in the German Federal Republic, France, Poland, and East 
Germany. 
A similar number of support vessels—processing vessels, motherships 
and refrigerated fish carriers—was purchased in many West European 
countries (the Netherlands, France, Denmark, Sweden, FRG, etc.), 
in Japan, and in Eastern Europe (especially in Poland, but also in 
East Germany and even in Bulgaria). 
The rest of the Soviet fishing fleet is composed of smaller (250-800 
GRT) side trawlers and an armada of supply tankers, floating repair 
shops, water carriers, fishery enforcement vessels, and tugs. 
PORTS OF CALL 
For transshipping the catch, and refueling and resupplying the fish- 
ing fleet, the Soviet Union uses a number of ports of call near the 
grounds where its fishing fleet operates. The most important of these 
ports are Singapore for the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Havana for 
the western Atlantic Ocean, the Canary Islands for the eastern Atlantic 
Ocean, and St. John’s and Halifax in Canada for fishing grounds 
adjacent to the Atlantic coasts of Canada and the United States. 
Those arrangements are sometimes accompanied by joint ventures 
such as a projected seafood processing plant in Singapore and export 
facilities on Spain’s Canary Islands. 
In September 1962, a special agreement was signed with Cuba 
for the construction of a modern fishing port in Havana Harbor. 
Although the Cuban missile crisis delayed the construction, the 
