A review of the U.S.S.R. fishing industry

Abstract

Abstract Since World War II the Soviet Union has increased the output of its fishing industry nearly tenfold. To achieve this the USSR had to shift operations from inland and coastal waters to the open seas. The process of converting the fishing industry from being based primarily on inland waters and on individual fishermen to operating in coastal waters and organizing state-planned and controlled enterprises was started before WWII. The postwar period saw the Soviet Union reach further and further into the oceans of the world. She rapidly increased her fleet capacity by construction at home and in other communist countries. Investments in the fishing industry increased from 1 4 of one per cent of the total investments in the country in pre-war years to 1% during the 1966–70 Five Year Plan. As a result, the size of individual units increased. The Soviet fleet acquired large modern processing mother ships, operating far away from home bases, and trawlers equipped with processing and freezing facilities. An increasingly higher proportion of the catch was caught and processed far from home. the fastest growth occurred during the sixties. In 1961 31.7% of all vessels had refrigeration facilities, in 1970 63.2%. The catch per vessel increased from 248 MT in 1960 to 681 MT in 1970; on fishing and processing refrigeration vessels it had reached 11,350 MT. The newly built fleet units have encountered difficulties in finding depleting resources of fish. In 1959 to catch 1 MT of fish in the open seas the average distance covered by the fleet was 1655 miles, by 1966 the distance had increased to 2881 miles. The increase in the size of the fishing fleet and of its processing capacities had led to an increase in the consumption of fish products in the USSR from 6.7 kg in 1913 to 18.5 kg in 1976. Furthermore, during the decade 1966–1975 alone, the Soviet Union exported about 1.5 billion dollars worth of fishing industry products. The rapid growth of the world output of sea products has brought about a change in the attitude of various nations to sea resources. One after another, coastal states have declared 200-mile economic zones, placing countries with large fishing fleets in a difficult situation. The Soviet Union is one of the countries most effected by the new restrictions. She will have to re-deploy her fishing fleet, partly into her own coastal waters and partly to foreign economic zones on the basis of new agreements or joint ventures. In spite of the difficulties faced, the Soviet Union plans to increase the output of her fishing industry during the current Five Year Plan (1976–1980) by 0.785 million MT. However, this increase is to be considerably less than during the previous Five Year Plan, when it amounted to 2.529 million MT.