An international fishing conference meets in Vladivostok

The problems of reproducing the biological resources of the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk received special attention at the sixth international fishing conference of the north Pacific countries. The conference met in Vladivostok, the administrative centre of the Maritime Territory in the south of Russia's Far East. "For Russia, the north-western part of the Pacific Ocean is the main fishing area which has accounted for two thirds of the national fish catch during the last half of the century," pointed out Yury Moskaltsov, deputy chairman of the Russian Goskomrybolovstvo organisation. Since the mid-1980s, said the spokesman for this organisation, international companies have been intensely fishing pollack in the Bering Sea. As a result, its reserves have been fully undermined. In order to restore them, in 1994 six countries signed a Convention on Preserving the Pollack Resources. After that the fishing of pollack was stopped in that area. According to the scientists's data, in 2001 the resources of pollack in the Bering Sea stabilised. The total permissible catch of pollack in the Bering Sea was established at the level of 365,000 tons. The conferees believe that in order to preserve the main resources of pollack, it is necessary to observe the low level of intensive fishing, to ban or limit fishing in the spawning period, and to regulate the fishing of young fish.