The coastline of the Russian Federation is the fourth longest in the world after the coastlines of Canada, Greenland, and Indonesia. The Russian fishing industry has an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 7.6 million km2 including access to twelve seas in three oceans, together with the landlocked Caspian Sea and more than two million rivers.FAO: Profile for Russia
According to the FAO, in 2005 the Russian fishing industry harvested 3,190,946 tonnes of fish from wild fisheries and another 114,752 tonnes from aquaculture. This made Russia the ninth leading producer of fish, with 2.3 percent of the world total.FAO: Fisheries and Aquaculture 2005 statistics.
Management Fisheries management is regulated by Russian federal laws. The federal law "On Fisheries and Protection of Aquatic Biological Resources" of December 2004 (referred to below as the Law on Fisheries) divides fisheries into three main categories" industrial, recreational, and subsistence fisheries of indigenous groups. Industrial fisheries includes coastal fisheries. This definition has been challenged and is under review.
The Law on Fisheries requires that total allowable catch (TAC) levels are set for fishery stocks. It defines these levels as the "scientifically justified annual catch of aquatic biological resources of particular species in a fishing area". However, the Law on Fisheries then goes on to state that industrial fisheries are not necessarily required to base their catch on TAC. The law does not explain this further, but calls for the federal government to issue a special TAC setting statute. Pacific salmon is the main stock that will probably not have TAC, but will have regulated fishing effort instead.
The Law on Fisheries also gives a definition of a fishing unit area and sets general principles for their use. The compiling of lists of fishing unit areas is delegated to the regional authorities. The Law on Fisheries has gaps and its application is criticized by parliamentarians and stakeholders. It may be expected that in the coming years at least two new federal laws, "On Coastal Fisheries" and "On Aquaculture", will be considered by Russian legislators.
Apart from TAC settings, fisheries are also regulated by the so-called Fishing Rules (Pravila rybolovstva). These rules are set separately for different geographical regions.
The Fishing Rules specify seasonal closures, closed areas, restrictions on specific gears such as restricting mesh sizes, minimum catch sizes, and restricted levels of allowable bycatch. Fisheries management has been changing since Soviet times, and further changes are likely.
The government has mismanaged the fisheries, with frequent restructuring of the institutions responsible for fishery management and control. Starting in 1992, the fishery authority has been reorganized at least five times. The head of the fishery authority was replaced seven times, and not one of these heads was a fishery professional. The issues involved in regulating fishing capacity were never really recognized. However, consistent fishery policies are starting to be developed now.Zilanov VK (2007) Fishery Problems in the Professional's Eye.Titova GD (2007) Bioeconomic Problems of Fisheries in National Jurisdiction Zones. St. Petersburg, VVM Ltd. Publishing, 367 p. (in Russian).
The extreme bureaucracy involved for a fishing vessel to make a port call and land fish results in coastal processing being bypassed. Instead, the seafood is just directly exported, unprocessed. Similarly, there are many bureaucratic difficulties in developing aquaculture. Getting a licence to use water and the necessary sanitary certificates is very time-consuming, although it does guarantee environmental and health safety. Ships built, purchased, or serviced outside of the Eurasian Economic Union face significant restrictions in landing catches caught in Russia's EEZ, and from 2022 will not be allocated any fishing quotas in Russian waters.
Artisanal
There is no legally adopted term in Russia for artisanal fisheries. Artisanal or subsistence fishing usually refers to fishing mainly with traditional gear, with production delivered to the market but also used for subsistence. In Russia, the term covers also several kinds of fisheries classified as industrial, such as salmon, chars, whitefish, navaga, flounders and greenling fisheries in the Baltic, the Arctic and the Far Eastern Seas. Subsistence fishing by indigenous groups is also an issue. Indigenous fishers mainly work estuaries, lagoons and rivers (for anadromous fish). Legally, they are bound to use their catch for local consumption only. They are not allowed to sell their catch, but in reality, this is not always the case.
In Russia, poverty contributes to poaching and other threats to fishery resources. Poverty can leave people depending on natural resources to feed themselves. There may be little perceived incentive to protect fish and other aquatic life and to use them in a sustainable way. Lack of awareness and lack of public involvement in managing local resources can result in poaching, overfishing, and other kinds of illegal activities. Poaching by private individuals feeds the industrial IUU catch, and forms a vicious cycle.
The social impacts of traditional fisheries has rarely been analysed. The yearly fishing cycle still dominates life in the traditional fishing villages of the Pomor, dotted around the coast of the White Sea.Tzetlin, A (2000) Traditional Nature Use On the White Sea. Ohrana dikoi prirody, 2: 13–16 (in Russian). Fishing has similarly influenced the life style of many indigenous groups, such as among settlers around the Pacific Coast, north of Siberia, and around the big lakes. In the late 1960s, administrative decisions were made to abandon many coastal villages and resettle people in larger settlements. This has disrupted the traditional ways and is associated with alcohol abuse and increased poverty. There is now a slow movement towards reviving cultural traditions. To succeed, there must also be a re-establishment of the sustainable fisheries that allowed such fishing communities to flourish.
Recreational Recreational fishing occurs everywhere in Russia. The Fishing Rules do not distinguish recreational fishing from artisan fishing, so both are regulated under the same rules. In some areas, tourist fishing is growing.
In 1999, recreational and subsistence fishers took 4,300 tonnes, mostly perches and cyprinids.Yatskevich, B.A., Pak, V.A., Rybalsky, N.G. (eds) (2000) Natural Resources and Environment of Russia. Moscow, Nia Priroda, Refia (in Russian). Later estimates are not available. The most significant recreational fishery by value is the Kola Peninsula Atlantic salmon fishery.
Commercial Russia has three main commercial fisheries: marine fisheries – including brackish water and anadromous species, and estuarine fisheries inland fisheries aquaculture
Catch by fishery category, 2005 Category Fishery zone Catchtonne Percent Comment Marine Coastal EEZ 69 Marine Foreign EEZ 14.5 The reported catch in EEZs of foreign states is stable. Marine High seas 10 Catch on the high seas increased in the 2000s. Inland 72,000 2.7 Inland fisheries are found everywhere in river basins and freshwater bodies, but the catch has constituted only a very small fraction of the total catch. Aquaculture 3.6 Aquaculture (mainly freshwater) production is relatively small compared to capture fisheries, but is growing.
Wild fisheries
EEZ
Russia's marine fisheries are based on twelve seas from three oceans which surround Russia, the landlocked Caspian Sea, and the high seas beyond Russia's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Marine capture fisheries in Russia's territorial seas, internal marine waters and the EEZ provided up to 75 percent of the total reported catch for 1996–2005.
The three oceans are: the Atlantic: with the Sea of Azov, Black Sea, Baltic, Barents Sea and White Sea the Arctic Ocean: with the Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea and Chuckchi Sea the Pacific: with the Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk and Sea of Japan.
Russia's EEZSea Around Us Project Area km2 Asia 6,382,530 km2 Baltic 24,549 Barents Sea 1,159,594 Total EEZ 7,566,673
Catch profile The officially recorded annual value of fisheries is about US$5 billion, equivalent to 0.3 percent of GDP. The fishery sector has been stable in absolute terms in recent years, so its share of GDP has reduced as the general economy has expanded.
Fisheries data in tonnes 2003 Production Imports Exports Food supply Per capita Fish for direct human consumption 3,389,932 815,155 1,374,894 2,481,542 17.3 kg Fish for animal feed and other purposes 348,652 — — — Due to the decreasing catch and a growing export to East Asian markets, Russian fisheries cannot meet current domestic demand for seafood. East Asian markets are more attractive to fishing enterprises than the domestic market. As a consequence, there are increasing imports for the affluent in big cities, with increasing subsistence and recreational fishing with its associated IUU catch.
Coastal fisheries
High seas fisheries
Inland fisheries
The biggest inland water is the landlocked Caspian Sea. The biggest lakes are Baikal (31,700 km2), Ladoga (19,100 km2) and Onega (9,700 km2). Russia has more than 2 million rivers, the largest of which are, in order, Severnaya Dvina, Pechora, Dnieper, Volga, Ob', Don, Yenisei, Lena, Kolyma, Indigirka and Amur. The most important inland fishing area is the Ob'–Irtysh River Basin (about 27 percent). Sixty species are caught in the inland fisheries of Russia.Reshetnikov, 2002 In volume terms, whitefish (Coregonidae), cyprinids, zanders and perch are most important. Set nets are the most common gear used in inland water commercial fisheries. Seines are also used on big rivers and lakes, and small trawls on the big lakes. In 2005, the official catch in the inland waters was 72,000 tonnes.Ministry of Natural Resources, 2006
+ Inland fish catch in tonnes Water bodies or drainage areas 2005 Percent Main species Ob-Irtysh catchment (West Siberia) 19,200 26.7 Enisei catchment 1,150 1.6 Lakes Ladoga 2,900 4.0 cyprinids, perch and whitefish Onega 2,100 2.9 cyprinids, perch and whitefish Chudsko-Pskovskoye (Peipsi) (shared with Estonia) 4,000 5.6 cyprinids, smelt and coregonids Ilmen 1,380 1.9 Baikal 2,500 3.5 whitefishWater reservoirs Rybinsk 1,040 1.4 Kuibyshevskoye 2,110 2.9 Saratovskoye 600 0.8 Volgograd (on the Volga) 1,720 2.4 Tsimlyansk (on the Don) 6,900 9.6 cyprinids, perch and sander Other areas 26,400 36.7 Total 72,000 100
In the past, sturgeon has been an important catch in the basin of the Sea of Azov and the Caspian Sea, and in Siberian Rivers and the Amur River. Currently, sturgeon stocks are heavily depleted and under constant pressure from poaching. Inland fisheries are regulated by the Law on Fisheries discussed above. However, few provisions refer specifically to inland fisheries, although there are specific regulations for same catchments and river systems. These regulations specify closed areas, seasonal closures, gear restrictions, minimum mesh sizes and minimum catch size.
Fishing fleet
According to the Russian State Marine Register, in 2002, the offshore fishing fleet contained about 2,500 fishing vessels, 366 transport vessels and 46 factory ships. Of the fishing vessels, 17 percent were longer than 64 metres (o/a), half were between 34 and 64 metres, and one-third were between 24 and 34 metres. Smaller boats are registered with the State Inspection of Small Size Fleet. In 2005, the marine small size fleet contained 2,491 boats, and the inland fleet contained 5,500 motor boats.
Fishing gears used are:
Midwater trawls – used by processing trawlers and freezing for redfish and Alaska pollock. Bottom trawls – restricted use by medium and large sized trawlers, for demersal fishes such as halibut, cod, redfish, flounder.