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COMPARISON WITH FAO CATCH DATA 
In addition to providing complete catch data to the Soviet national 
statistical office, the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Fisheries also provides catch 
data to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United 
Nations in Rome. These data are provided to FAO in accordance 
with FAO statistical requirements and do not include the catch of 
marine mammals (in metric tons) and the amounts of marine plants 
harvested. This is the reason why the FAO data are always lower 
than the actual total Soviet fisheries catch which is published only 
in Russian. The data submitted to FAO are given in table 2 (column 
4) with calculations of the difference between the two sets of data. 
This difference is the approximate Soviet catch in metric tons of 
Antarctic and Pacific whales, various species of fur seals and the 
harvest of marine algae and other plants. An attentive reader will 
note that, as the Soviets began to expand their Antarctic whaling 
in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s'* the difference between FAO 
data and Soviet national catch data increased. In recent years, when 
the International Whaling Commission, prodded by the United States, 
began to decrease the catch quotas for Soviet and Japanese whale 
fishermen, this difference has grown progressively smaller. 
MAJOR FISHING AREAS 
In 1913, Russian fishermen obtained their catches mostly from in- 
land waters. Only 17.3 percent of the total catch was taken on the 
high seas, mostly in the Barents, Baltic and Black Seas, and in the 
Pacific. 
During the 1917-41 period, Soviet fishermen had already begun 
to shift increasingly to these open seas. In World War II, however, 
the high seas Soviet European fleet was practically wiped out; only 
fishery vessels operating in the Pacific were saved. 
Wartime destruction slowed Soviet expansion into the high seas 
only temporarily. The Pacific fishing fleet was reinforced and a new 
Baltic fleet was organized, mostly from vessels seized by victorious 
Soviet troops. By 1946, the high seas provided 46 percent of the 
total catch, a percentage that has increased ever since. (See fig. 3.) 
In 1975, over 90 percent of the total Soviet catch will be obtained 
from international waters and the most important Soviet fishing 
grounds today are adjacent to foreign coasts (see fig. 4). 
During the past 25 years, Soviet fisheries have been characterized 
by two major trends: 
1. In the Pacific, they began to expand in the 1950’s to the 
east and southeast off the coasts of the United States 
(1958—Alaska, 1966—Pacific Northwest, 1972—California); 
3 Between 1958 and 1963, the U.S.S.R. added 5 whaling motherships to its fishing fleet: three 
went to Antarctica, the other two operate in the North Pacific. 
