419 
Among the powered vessels, the emphasis during the last 20 years 
was on additions of trawlers and fishery support vessels. The first 
increased from about 1,600 units in 1955 to over 2,800 units by 
1975, while the number of the various types of support vessels more 
than quadrupled. 
In the ‘‘trawlers” category, special attention must be paid to large 
stern trawlers. They were all constructed during the last 20 years. 
These are large high seas vessels with a capacity of from 2,600-—3,200 
gross registered tons per vessel. The addition of 760 large stern 
trawlers during 1955-75 has added almost 2 million GRT to the 
total gross tonnage of the Soviet fishing fleet. 
The total gross tonnage of about 4,400 Soviet high-seas fishing 
and fishery support vessels having over 100 GRT, is estimated at 
over 6 million GRT by the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA, 
U.S. Department of Commerce. The estimate is for the end of October 
1975. Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, which began to publish limited 
data on the Soviet fishing fleet in 1969 and improved them year 
after year, estimates that on July 1, 1974, a total of 4,043 such 
vessels had a gross tonnage of 5.6 million GRT. Lloyd’s data are 
somewhat low. This may be due to the fact that quite a few Soviet 
fishery support vessels were constructed before Lloyd’s began to col- 
lect its data, or because their construction was never announced. 
The National Marine Fisheries Service, which conducts an active sur- 
veillance program on foreign fishing off U.S. coasts, has often been 
able to add otherwise unreported new or old Soviet fishery vessels 
to its inventory rosters after such vessels were sighted and identified 
by its fishery enforcement patrols. Lloyd’s, however, provides an in- 
teresting breakdown of the fleet by gross tonnage. (See table 3.) 
Smaller fishing vessels below 500 GRT, mostly side trawlers and 
seiners are by far the most numerous (2,025 units or 60 percent 
of all fishing vessels), but they account for only about 16 percent 
of the gross tonnage. 
TABLE 3.—U.S.S.R. NUMBER AND Gross TONNAGE OF FISHING AND FISHERY SUPPORT VESSELS, 
1969 AND 1974. 
1969 1974 Average GRT 
Type of vessel and tonnage category Number GRT Number GRT 1969 1974 
Fishing vessels: 
NOO=499*GIRG, 3) Sin ey es 72 415,416 2,025 434,294 222 214 
S500=999. GRU). = a ae ein eh 335 229,960 781 494,518 686 633 
Over O0O'GRI 222.0 22 ee 397 1,138,551 710 1,876,130 2,868 2,642 
otalyent Feria. afte. Gee 2,604 1,783,927 3,516 2,804,942 685 798 
SUPDORtWVeSSEIS( = 55 eee eee ee 304 1,621,221 See BO SLO e355 S73} 
Grand total ______ td rae Be 2,908 3,405,148 4,043 5,610,014 1,171 1,388 
Source: Lloyd’s register of shipping statistical tables for 1974 and 1969. 
On the other hand, the 710 fishing vessels over 1,000 gross register 
tons, all of them large stern factory and freezer trawlers, had a gross 
tonnage of almost 1.9 million in July 1974. This constituted almost 
70 percent of the total, even though their number (710 units) was 
barely 20 percent of the total. 
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