Fishing about and about fishing
KOENIGSBERG-KALININGRAD
And you are crestfallen, no hope you can raise,Seawater will creep in your veins,But waves of the ocean forever will praiseYour glory, your death and your pains. (After an old Russian naval song – G.Zaytsev, transl).
On 27th February, 1967, the Tucan, a "Tropic"-class 80-m freezer-trawler when on her 5th fishing trip from the port of Kaliningrad to fishing grounds in the NE Atlantic, encountered a force-8 gale.
"Winds … came in guts and the seas reached mountainous heights. …The vessel was in good repair; manned by experienced crew… …it seemed that there was nothing to worry about. But it turned out that there was a flow in the construction of this and of other trawlers of this series. The weak link was
…the stern ramp… that …had to be put into the upright position… serving as a "wall" …(which) would protect the stern deck from sea waves. … This time it was not an ordinary wave but an immense breaker – a grey monster the size of a four-storey building. It rose astern and thundered down on the "wall" with such devastating force that the welds, joints, and even a whole sheet of steel plating that were holding the slipway, were torn away… A rough and ready estimate of the force with which the slipway was crushed… …the death blow was equal to 468.8 tons. …the result was absolutely disastrous… the seas began to pour into the steering room and, further on, to the engine room. …the crew members tried to save the trawler… But the damage was too great, and in the early hours of February 28, 1967, the Tukan sank. Of the crew of 76 only 11 seamen survived".
These passages come from the final section of Chapter 8 – Fishing Industry - of a new book by Georgy Zaytsev, published in Moscow, in English (available at gznexus@rol.ru). The book, which carries a bit awkward title: "Koenigsberg-Kaliningrad. Information for Consideration" relates the millennium old history of this Hanseatic port in the Baltic Sea, its 1945 conquest by the Soviet Army, and its consequent transformation from a German, East-Prussian Koenigsberg to Russian Kaliningrad. Chapter 8 is of particular interest to everybody interested in the history of the world fisheries, and those interested in the rise and fall of the Soviet fisheries empire.
Throughout its history, Koenigsberg – a city of 300,000 inhabitants had not been a specialized fishing port, although it served as a consumption, processing and export market. Only during the Soviet period, already as Kaliningrad, it arrived at its, however temporary prominence as one of the world's major fishing centres. Although, at the war end, the city laid in ruins, and no traces of its former fishery could be found, the new rulers of the northern part of the East Prussia, now a part of the USSR, prepared a Five-Year Plan to make Kaliningrad – a base for a new fishing industry. It was a job from the scratch: the city rebuilt, shipyards, fishing fleet, cold stores and fish-processing plants constructed, new inhabitants, including seamen and fishermen, as well as some second-hand vessels from other parts of the USSR imported, and the necessary administration established. Already in 1947, the annual landings in Kaliningrad were close to 7,000 mt.
In 1948 a reconnaissance expedition in the N.Atlantic gave birth to the Soviet herring driftnet fishery, run by a state-owned company, which commanded 86, 40-m, 300-400 hp, medium trawlers (SRT-class) converted to driftnetting. With time, 3 E.German-built, 167-m factory ships with storing capacity up to 10,000 mt started operating from Kaliningrad, to serve the expeditionary fleet, which continued till the early 1960s when, for several reasons, the Soviet N.Atlantic herring landings dropped by 83%.
In the meantime, USSR was the first to adopt the stern-trawling technique pioneered by the British in 1953. When in 1957 Kaliningrad got its first large, stern-freezer-trawler (BMRT) of the Pushkin class, already 21 such 84-m, 1,900 hp ships were delivered to other Soviet ports.
In 1965, after the government had decided to develop the Kaliningrad Province and invest in its fishery industry, the fleet grew fast. In 1969,
71 large distant-waters trawlers and over 190 medium trawlers and seiners operated from the Port of Kaliningrad and harbours nearby. They were served by a fleet of mother-ships, fish carriers, and tankers. The large trawlers were fishing throughout the whole Atlantic Ocean. In the heyday of the 1980s, Kaliningrad fishing fleet numbered several hundreds vessels landing close to a million mt of fish/year.
Commercial operations were accompanied by research and fishing surveys carried out by hundreds of scientists, technicians, and seamen in 8 vessels of the enormous Atlantic Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (AtlantNIRO). Fisheries specialists of the USSR and other countries from the Socialist Block were trained at the Kaliningrad State Technical University (not mentioned by the author).
This prosperity, however, carried seeds of its own demise. Much of USSR's distant water fishing was carried out in coastal waters of other countries. Since early 1980s, started a worldwide process of enforcing the 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) principle. The mammoth Soviet fleet was either losing access to its traditional distant fishing grounds, or had to make costly arrangements. In the meantime the fleet was ageing, the artificially regulated fish prices were too low, and the whole Soviet economy was deteriorating. When the whole system eventually collapsed, runaway privatization resulted in fragmentation of the Kaliningrad State-owned fishing vessels and industry, and their sellout to companies and individuals often for peanuts. But without State's support, the new owners sold many vessels to foreign buyers, others were stranded in foreign ports, some lost to litigation, still others just laid off.
I assume that the availability of the aging and cheap Russian fishing vessels contributed to the emergence and expansion of the illegal fishing plague(IUU). For more details on the history of Koenigsberg-Kaliningrad, and the rise and decline of the Kalinigrad fishing armada one has to read Zaytsev's fascinating narrative.