Translated material
Fish days
Far Eastern sailors have come to terms with paid quotas
The protest action that took place yesterday in Vladivostok against the paid distribution of fishing quotas showed that the protest of Far Eastern fishermen is by no means uncompromising. While about 400 sailors gathered under red flags on the station square, demanding the cancellation of the auctions and the resignation of the government, their leaders were preparing to participate in the first auction, scheduled for February 17.Dalmoreprodukt, Roliz and the Vladivostok Fish Processing Plant, as well as almost all fishing industry enterprises in Kamchatka and Sakhalin, will compete for quotas for catching pollock and the North Sea of Okhotsk herring at the upcoming auctions.
According to the head of the fisheries department of the Sakhalin region administration, Igor Bystrov, in total more than 90 applications were submitted to the auction, but no more than 40 companies will actually participate. “All our fishing industry enterprises,” says Mr. Bystrov, “opposed the payment for biological resources, but submitted so many applications that the auctions can actually be considered completed.”
The participants of the Vladivostok rally, frozen in the wind, seem to still not believe it.
“If today each trawler spends $160 on catching a ton of pollock, then with the introduction of auctions these costs will increase by another $127,” said Vladimir Nagorny, chairman of the regional committee of fishing industry trade unions. In his opinion, the budget of not a single coastal company can withstand such expenses. The demonstrators sent a resolution on this to the State Duma, the government and the president.
But even this contradictory cry from the souls of coastal fishermen was not unanimous. The day before, the leadership of the Vladivostok Base of Trawling and Refrigerated Fleet (VBTRF) publicly announced their refusal to join the protest, describing the rally as “obviously populist.” Instead, on Wednesday the company sent a trawler to fish for northern shrimp, with a catch quota of 204 tons of this seafood. In addition, VBTRF has the right to catch 1,700 tons of cod and 700 tons of halibut, but these limits are not enough for the joint-stock company. “The issue of allocating quotas or purchasing them at auction remains very relevant for VBTRF employees,” says the company’s press secretary, Vadim Bratukhin. And if “irreconcilable” ones are still found among the fishing companies, VBTRF is ready to increase the volume of catch.
The first auction will take place on the European-Asian Exchange. Quotas for catching 100 thousand tons of pollock and 2 thousand tons of herring in the Sea of Okhotsk will be put up for sale. According to Interfax, over 90 Russian fishing companies submitted applications to participate in the February and March auctions. The next three auctions (March 15, 16 and 20) will most likely be held by the Central Russian Universal Exchange, the Moscow Non-Ferrous Metals Exchange and the Interregional Universal Commodity Exchange. In total, about 15 auctions are planned to be held in 2001.