Russian fishermen catch more than 1 mln tonnes since Jan 1 - Rosrybolovstvo
MURMANSK. March 15 (Interfax) - Russian fishermen have since the year began caught more than one million tonnes of fish, the deputy chief of Russian federal fisheries agency Rosrybolovstvo, Vasily Sokolov, said during a select meeting devoted to the capelin fishing season in Murmansk on Thursday.
"The Russian fleet has now caught more than one million tonnes, a pretty significant figure. We are outstripping last year," Sokolov said.
The main catches are in Northern and Far Eastern waters, he said. But the catch in the Barents and White Seas "are somewhat behind the level of last year." Sokolov said this is due to less capelin being harvested, the reason for which was unusually high water temperatures. "The capelin did not gather in dense schools," he said.
Twenty-six vessels were working Northern waters and seven the western basin, and today eleven ships have already finished harvesting capelin and moved to the harvest of other seafood species. Of those, two are harvesting bottom-feeding species in the Barents Sea and the other nine are catching whiting in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean.
During the capelin-harvesting period, the Norwegian Coast Guard made eleven inspections of Russian vessels, all without issue, though three vessels were asked to shift position with the aim of avoiding the accidental catching of bottom-feeding species.