Usually, I prefer not to enumerate all my positions and regalia, but they do affect directly the theme I want to raise in this article of mine.

When my children are asked what is their father's occupation, they get bewildered and reply after they have found a proper definition. Even if they find this definition, it is usually one of many definitions: either fish protection inspector, or journa-list, or writer, or cineast, or editor since recently.

Therefore, let's put them all in the right order: chief of media-center of Kamchatrybvod, chief editor of the magazine titled "Northern Pacific", the newspaper "Tikhookeansky Vestnik", Far-Eastern Fishermen Film-Making Studio, Northern Pacific Publishing House, president of the Charitable Public Fund for Conservation of Northern Pacific Bioresources (Northern Pacific Fund), member of Council of Journalists, Cineasts and Writers of Russia.

Why am I presenting this list? How is it related to secrets of the Bering sea?

It is directly connected with it. On the 15th of July, 1954, I was born on the shore of this cold northern sea, in the village of Tilichiki, Olutorsky district, Koryaksky Autonomous Okrug. I spent first five years of my life in the village of Vyvenka where my father, Ivan Grigoryevich, worked as Communist Organizer at Fishing and Reindeer Herding Collective Farm named after V.I. Lenin (later renamed to Gorki Collective Farm). At the age of almost three years, the Bering sea wave licked me and another boy off the shore together with seashells and small stones we were collecting together. It happened right before our parents. And then this wave returned us…

So this sea is sacred for me.

My literary searches started from the Bering sea as well, from its history: history of its discovery, history of its exploration.

The first book titled "Conquerors of the Great Ocean" told about those who explored it.

The second book titled "Meet the Sun" told about those who conquered it.

And the films from the video-cycle titled "The Okhotsk Sea Polygon": the part about Bering sea called "Donut hole", "Fishermen Village" about Ivashka and "I was born in Japan" about my native Ust-Kamchatsk (we moved to that town from the North in 1959).

As a fish protection inspector and a journalist, I visited all settlements of Olutorsky district and many settlements of the adjacent district, Karaginsky. Most importantly, I have visited those hardly accessible places where some time ago delivery and processing of famous Olutorskaya herring were humming. Those abandoned fishing settlements had not been simply destroyed, they had been abandoned and everything was simply left: vessels, mechanisms, equipment… These settlements radiated radioactive boredom, which was so strong I couldn't avoid catching it. Moreover, by that moment I had already faced in my native village Ust-Kamchatsk that our Soviet prosiness: "First we will raze everything to the ground and then… "

And then… This is another thing I would like to speak about too.

The secrets of the Bering sea begin in its name already. Famous Vitus Bering, who was given the order to find the strait separating Asia and America, did not execute the task of his overlord. But the strait, separating two mainlands, was given a name of an unlucky navigator as well as the northernmost sea of the Pacific or the Great Ocean as they called it in ancient times.

Why? Because all this time, both before and nowadays history has been like our life—filled not with facts but gossips and suppositions. These very gossips and suppositions are driving the progress. A fact is just a fact, and it is difficult to manipulate it, while one can manipulate gossips and suppositions as much as he wants. The key moment is that they have intrigue within. And once there is an intrigue then necessarily some intriguant shows up immediately, using both gossips and suppositions in his favor.

The same occurred in the case of Bering. Officially, Fyodorov, Gvozdyov and Moshkov discovered the strait. But it was named the Bering Strait.

The first boat of the Second Kamchatka expedition to reach North American coast was the one commanded by Chirikov. But the sea was given a name of Captain-Commander.

And the name of the first Russian person that opened the era of commercial exploration of the Bering sea and led "shitikis" (small boats built without a nail out of weaved willow and baleen!) to the Aleutian islands and to Alaska is absolutely forgotten in both Russia and the world.

One couldn't call him a "grab-all" or a "grasper", using definitions of modern Russian language. He was the citizen of his fatherland in the highest sense of this word. One fact could serve as a good example: this man, Sergeant of Okhotsk Crew Yemelyan Sofronovich Basov, invested all funds he had gained in marine mammal harvesting into exploratory expedition looking for copper on one island, which was later named Medny ("Copper island"). Basov died in poverty. His name was lost in history. And secrets appeared. And someone had to disclose these secrets to resurrect his name for the history. This was how my first book "Conquerors of the Great ocean" was being born. During my survey of poorly accessible historical materials, I saw the picture entirely different from the one created by our national history that condemned first signs of capitalism in Russia and all other things which existed in our history prior to October, 1917.

Today, almost the same is happening, since we have changed our outlook to the opposite one. Now we ascribe all mortal sins to Soviet Power.

So, here I am turning the leaves of archive documents (and I have accumulated quite a big number of them for twenty years of searches), and I am surprised with that elevation of the Soviet Union fisheries that took place in the epoch called "Soviet Epoch" by us.

No, I am not surprised, but I am as-toun-ded!!!

The history of fisheries of the Far East is a little older than one hundred years. In pre-revolution time primitive salmon harvesting formed the mainstay of Russian economy. It was primitive in the sense that fish were extracted by set marine nets or floating river nets and were then salted by so-called "dry salting method", and piled on banks covered just by mats, waiting for a steamer to deliver these products to Japan.

At that time Far-Eastern salmon was in demand all over the world. Alas, for some reason Russian fishing enterprises (as well as Japanese ones) were reluctant to transit to deep processing and invest funds in construction of fish processing factories.

But when the new power came in 1927 in Ust-Kamchatsk the first state fish cannery was built. In ten years, there were over thirty of them in Kamchatka. In 50-s, the first factory in Ust-Kamchatsk was either 65th or 66th in the order of suchlike factories.

In 1936, the base of active marine fishing (BAOL) appeared on Karaginsky island. And in mid-50-s, mid-tonnage fishing fleet came to Kamchatka. Its fishing capa-cities turned out to be incommensurably larger than the traditional source of resources, i.e. commercial volumes of herring, flounder, cod and perch in the Northern Pacific.

Then nobody knew about it. People thought there were as much fish in seas as water and that one could catch them even by trousers. But such approach failed. The secret was disclosed — the Bering sea as any other has its limited possibilities.

Alas, then those discoveries did not teach us anything. Neither Russian fishermen nor Japanese nor Americans. The World Ocean was harvested. It has neither coasts nor bottom, hasn't it?

And that is why nobody even noticed that in the Northern Pacific, in the Bering sea few people of the planet knew about a tragedy occurred.

The tragedy was not noticed even in Kamchatka, though this land seems to directly meet its waters.

This happened due to two reasons.

Firstly, almost at the same time Kamchatka was experiencing consequences of salmon disaster. Starting in 20-s, during salmon spawning runs, Japanese fishermen installed drift (floating) nets on the beam (in front of) the Kamchatka river estuary, and then at estuaries of other salmon-bearing rivers. Those nets blocked salmon heading to rivers. There were years when military ships of Pacific Fleet were sent to eliminate those nets. Alas, the result was sad. The salmon disaster. Dozens of perfectly equipped fish canneries and fish processing bases were shut down since they were of no use. Villages of fishermen and fish processors were abandoned. Smaller fishing collective farms began to unite in bigger ones, that is villages and settlements started to close including those where indigenous community had lived for thousands of years before.

In other words, Kamchatka experienced its grief.

This was one reason.

The second reason was that according to rules of Soviet censor-ship, it was not allowed to publish anything related to fisheries in open media. In the Soviet times this theme (problems of conserving and rational use of fishery resources) was TABOO.

And not in 50-s only. Then it was closed for public in 60-s, 70-s, in 80-s.

I myself was a victim of that "non-glasnost" epoch: when I prepared an article on problems of fishery to be printed in central media. My article was sent to the newspaper's editors office and was then forwarded to Ministry of Fisheries of the USSR, from where it was further forwarded for endorsement to Main State Fisheries Committee and then to Kamchatrybvod. The chief of Kamcharybvod Dmitry Fillipovich Kolmogorov (he died, I cherish his memory!) called me to his study. I must say we all were afraid of him (as years went we understood that were afraid of him as small children are afraid of their severe father). I entered his study unaware of the reason of his call, but already dismayed since he seldom asked us to visit him, and, as a rule, it happened when he needed to tell somebody off. Dmitry Fillipovich handed me my article and asked: "Have you written this?". "Yes, I have" (for "Pravda" or for "Sovetskaya Rossiya", then these were the major and the most authoritative newspapers in the country). "Well, now write the response".

And I returned to my study to write the response to my own article. It was like: "In the article, written by Senior State Inspec-tor S.I. Vakhrin, there is objective information on problems of… ". Kolmogorov signed this comment, and the article made its second circle, visiting all echelons added by signatures, cut, blacked out, so, when I received the original of the article ready for publishing nothing was left of the problems I had raised in it.

And this was happening not in 50-s, but in 80-s. In late 80-s, my friend, film maker, the creator of numerous films about Far-Eastern fishermen Gennady Lysyakov, who was at the moment the Secre-tary of Film Makers Council of USSR and a winner of State Russian Award, worked on the film with seemingly harmless title "Where can I buy a fresh fish?". The release of this film to screens was sensational, though it asked a most ordinary question even from the present day perspective: why not give Far-Eastern collective farmers the right (you are not going to believe this!) to… process fish?

Fish processing was a state monopoly. Collective farmers were entitled to catch fish only and deliver to the state. The only exception was the Baltic sea collective farms. The interesting fact: Kamchatka-based collective farm-millionaire located at the settlement of Seroglazka that harvested hundreds of thousand tons of fish, produced the same profit as one Baltic sea Kalinin collective farm that harvested ten times less fish, but had the right to process caught fish.

The fact that not harvesting but processing provides the main income in fisheries seems an axiom. But how hard it was to push that topic! But for the Secretary of Regional Communist Party Committee P.P. Zinoviev the film would perhaps have come to cinema screens much later or it would have been eliminated at all. By the way, that was the time when Perestroika was in full force, thinking was being transformed and becoming "new", but old bans were sitting in place so strongly, that it was impossible to tear them out as if they were old rusty nails stuck in wood.

Therefore, speaking about 50-s and 60-s is really meaningless, given the fact that namely that problem related to delivery and processing of fish caused the tragedy, to be exact—the chain of environmental tragedies of the Bering sea, resulting in devastation of Russian coast for long decades (still observed nowadays).

In 1965, (during the short period of mitigated censorship) a correspondent of "Komsomolskaya Pravda" V.M. Peskov wrote the following about Olutorskaya epic (in late 80-s, THEY DID NOT ALLOW TO EVEN QUOTE THESE LINES): "For example, a seiner catches two thousand centners. The hold can take only one hundred and fifty (or two-three hundred with navigation regulations broken). What to do with the rest? It would be fine to call a neighbor and give to him. But there is no time to dot that as each minute means a lot of money. The seiner throws damaged fish overboard and instantly directs to the base. It reaches the base. There is a queue of ships there. It waits, then three hundred centners turn to "third quality" fish, and it is not profitable to deliver it, and they go overboard. This is how two thousand centners disappeared from a seine. The same happens with another seiner and another. Today, tomorrow, and several years running…

The same picture on the shore. Say, they have salted a party of fish. They have paid to a fisherman, to a "salter", and they have paid for a container. Suddenly, they learn that too many products have been accumulated, and they will unlikely transport them out soon while fisher-men start delivering another sort of herring, fatter herring. What to do? They throw the fish to the dump".

In 1965, a great change occurred in herring fishing. And three years after in connection with the complete destruction of this stock the fishery was closed. The former stocks have not restored in even more than thirty years period. The abandoned villages are still there, waiting for inhabitants and workers to come home.

And the tragedy of the huge Bering sea diminished to small drops of personal tragedies, personal destinies of fishermen and fish processors that had to leave their familiar spots and look for new housing, new jobs, new motherland for themselves. Nobody wrote about that in newspapers, and nobody spoke of it on the radio. So, the country did not notice anything.

In fact, country was overwhelmed with different matters. Just then great Soviet reformers made a decision to create another economic miracle: to ruin and eliminate hundreds of thousand of small settlements ("economically inexpedient") with the purpose to unite and amalgamate different economies. Perhaps, the Great Partiotic War had brought less destruction and grief to our people than that reckless idea.

The same was happening then in Kamchatka too: almost instantly upon closure of coastal enterprises collective farms began to unite and enlarge, while settlers were moving to new places.

Thus, nobody, actually, noticed the tragedy of Olutorskaya herring and its consequences in that general turmoil.

The Ministry of Fisheries of USSR, seeing no perspective in development of Kamchatka coast (located in the very center of one of the largest world fishing areas!), issues a historical solution on fishing expansion.

It was then that access to any information on negative activities of fishing and fish processing fleet of the Soviet Union in seas, and oceans of the planet was finally denied (and irrevocably so far!).

We could learn only about victories and records, about execution of the socialist obligations and over-execution of Year Plans and Five Year Plans.

No doubt there were victories. As well as, there were heroes. Can we call our fishermen other than heroes, if they worked at Pribilof Islands or in the Alaska Bay on medium fishing boats in incredibly severe conditions without any special equipment to struggle icing? Not all of them returned from those expeditions which opened the era of exploring the World ocean. Then we were not told about that as well. Luckily, witnesses are still alive, those information keepers we get data from and reveal facts, and restore historical justice. But who can say how many untold things have gone forever. These things are forever lost for descendants, for the history.

What do we know about Alaskan Epic? We know only that literally within several years commercial stocks of perch and flounder were eroded. It means that within ten years massive commercial expeditions of mid-tonnage fleet eroded the basic harvesting areas in the Northern Pacific: in 50-s, the stocks of Penzhinskaya herring, Yavinskaya cod and flounder were eliminated, in 60-s, the same happened to Olutorskaya herring, perch and flounder of the Alaska Bay.

Thus, mid-tonnage fleet had to survive at the expense of fish resources that were still available in the Far East, and the next stage in exploration of the World ocean was assigned to large-tonnage fleet. And we went to the Hawaiian islands, to the shore of California, to the coast of Southern America. We even fished Antarctic krill.

That was the epoch of our world achievements in fisheries. No less significant than our achievements in space exploration. In space we were the first. In fishing we were the second.

But while we were exploring the World ocean and frightened Soviet people with hard-to-pronounce exotic names of fishes, our main competitors, Japanese fishers, were harvesting in the Bering sea full force, to be more precise, they were fishing the Bering sea pollock, which was that time (Japanese are absolute experts on that!) already invaluable.

While fishermen on our mid-tonnage vessels threw blue-eyed "mityok" overboard not to pollute catches with it or delivered pollock only to make figures of catches as close as possible to those envisaged by a plan, or to be issued premiums for over-execution of fishing plans, the Japanese fishermen were fully engaged in technology, allowing to get highly profitable goods out of pollock.

In 70-s, when we returned to our Far-Eastern waters we did not invent anything better than to bring fish meal production bases to the Bering and the Okhotsk seas, absorbing a thousand ton of pollock a day since—we wanted to saturate the country with fish meal and thus raise Soviet cattle breeding and aviculture at the expense of pollock.

Our imperial contempt to this unfortunate fish is still observed today. This mother fish is feeding the whole Far East. The loss of pollock will cause environmental and economic disasters we have not yet experienced. Salmon and herring, cod and flounder are not a great deal in comparison to what death of pollock may lead us to.

But we still hide our heads in the sand, raising our plucked tails with pride like ostriches frightened by someone.

The death of pollock is a national tragedy. Are we really still unaware today that we are already standing on the edge of abyss and are making all efforts possible (and impossible too, and this is already beyond common sense) to kill our family provider.

And this is not a secret of "Madrid yard" anymore. It is true. It is strict, unpleasant truth. Though we know very little. Unfortunately, we know so little. The truth is being hidden. But it resembles a needle: you cannot hide it as it will nevertheless pinprick you.

I do not want to speak about biological problems of the Bering sea pollock, its origin or migration ways. Such wise scientific observations do not say anything to broad public no matter Russian or American. Plus, how can one believe science if biological theories on the Okhotsk sea pollock distribution in harvesting areas varied depending on the number of demands higher-ranked authorities expressed to execute and over-execute Five Year Plans. The same people first assured public of one evident fact and then with same confidence spoke about entirely opposite things. Institutional science is dependent. We have been convinced of it in practice several times.

Therefore, let's not deepen into secrets of biology.

Let's touch other secrets — the secrets of economy.

It turns out that in the Bering sea it is profitable for large-tonnage fleet to catch 5 to 8 tons of pollock per day. Frequently, we raised these data and expressed our indignation on pages of "Tikhookeansky Vestnik". For example, such catches appear to be profitable for the "American Monarch". As well as for a Polish trawler or a Chinese ship or a Korean ship.

Our local fish workers both in Primorye and Kamchatka were openly showed their exasperation by this arbitrariness. But note that on each foreign vessel a representative of Russia is available. Consequently, a representative of Russia doesn't give a damn to what actual day catches foreign superships are.

As for Russian fishermen, their fishing in the Bering sea is uncontrolled at all. It is fairly difficult to drop from a fish protection vessel (which is usually a medium sized trawler) onboard of a large-tonnage ship as the Bering sea is seldom calm. Plus, there are usually few fish protection ships in the Bering sea. That's why vessels fish as it goes—go figure out how much one shows, what is correct and what is untrue, what is honest and what is not. Again, this is within the field of rumors and fabrications.

The facts are as follows: ac-cording to last year fishing data, pollock catch in the Bering sea was approxi-mately a half or a little more than that defined by TAC (total allowable catch).

Does this mean that the Bering sea has become scanty?

"Yes", Russian fishermen say.—"We filter water by our trawls".

"No", Americans reply.—"The stock of pollock is very good, and we can even allocate a part of quota to maintain Steller sea lions. Let them feed and live!"

So, pictures in two parts of the Bering sea are entirely opposite.

Perhaps, the pictures are similar, but the criteria applied to define "scarcity" are little different? Maybe, we are just cunning here, and there are absolutely different figures behind these? We do not believe that Didenko would agree to let his supertrawlers built in Spain to produce 5 to 6 tons of pollock per day, right? He would have long ago hung his fishermen on masts (if he has any) for that.

The key to this our secret of the Bering sea pollock harvesting was found by our Kamchatka-based scientists A.I. Varketin, A.O. Zolotov and A.V. Buslov. They wrote a joint article "Inadequate count of walleye pollock catch as one of factors for abundance reduction".

The scientists have calculated how much fish is thrown overboard and not accounted during pollock fishing in the Okhotsk sea. The figures are simply stunning.

Reasons? Fish workers throw overboard the pollock, sizes of which do not suit processors that produce decapitated pollocks and fillet. One of conclusion is: "Thus, on boards of vessels specialized in decapitated pollock production 83,6 % of the catch were processed and accounted, while only 47 % were accounted on fillet-making ships".

But if in the Okhotsk sea Fisheries Regulations restrict by-catch of juveniles to minimum and a captain, re-trawling in the place where he already extracted many juveniles, can be punished very strictly, all restrictions on catching juveniles in the exclusive economic zone of Russia in the Bering sea have been removed.

And how many dozens of tons go overboard from each ton of products made from pollock? This information is shrouded in mystery.

It is considered that those pollock were born in America, so one can easily fish them without counting.

But pollock is evidently not a stupid fish, and it has identified a specific migratory route home, bypassing Russian waters. Perhaps, this phenomenon could explain scarcity of Russians' catches and increase of TAC for pollock fishing in American exclusive economic zone of the Bering sea?

But the theme of my article is not pollock of the Bering sea, though it is still one of the unresolved mysteries.

The theme is as follows: too many secrets are present in the past and the present of the Bering sea.

When we started to prepare for the Russian-American public conference on problems of conserving living resources of the Bering sea, we arrived to one very important conclusion: the primary problem, most important and significant problem is availability or absence of full and objective information on history of exploration of the sea, its current state and existing (real or invented!?) problems of conserving bioresources.

Presently, the conclusions regarding the loss of Olutorsky herring stock are reconsidered — allegedly, it happened due to global climate change.

They now say also that drastic decline of pollock abundance is a consequence of gradual warming of the Northern Pacific seas.

At the same time, the Bristol Bay fishermen linked one of failures in sockeye fishery not with natural factors but with Russian (to be more exact Japanese done under Russian-Japanese treaty) drift-netting.

American fishermen consider presence of foreign fleet in Russian Exclusive Economic Zone as a negative factor, impacting on bioresources of the Bering sea. And again, there is no clear economic justification of this influence, but rumors and speculations. Although different information is known—information about lobbying of interests of foreign fishermen by State Fisheries Committee (!). Recently, media advised that president of Russia V.V. Putin promised South-Korean fishermen to increase their quotas in the Far-Eastern seas (that is in that long-suffering Bering sea). But they will continue to fish five tons per day as before. In other words, they will continue to steal resources. On our part we will continue to carefully not notice this. As we don't notice Poles, ignoring payment for resources and fishing Bering sea pollock free of charge. But unlike Americans, Russians do not consider it as a negative factor impacting on the state of Bering sea living resources.

Moreover, Russian fishermen accuse Americans of their efforts and the Bering sea-related policy, which have led to occupation of Russian exclusive economic zone by foreign fishermen. Namely, American diplomats made Russian diplomats (during "shevardnadzery" and "kozyryovery") crouch before the USA and sign a series of agreements and protocols that are still echoing painfully for Russian ears. Closure of harvesting in donut hole area resulted in arrival of foreign fleet to open area of the Okhotsk sea. And in order to "smoke out" foreigners, eroding stocks of the Okhotsk sea, our authorities gave them quotas. That's why they are now fishing in the Bering sea. Whose fault is it? Russia's only? Or the United States'? Or both countries should bear full responsibility for what they have done?

It means that both parties, Americans, who did not have such stringent and continued censorship applied to public announcements on bioresources of the Bering sea, and had access to world fisheries information, and Russians, who were held fixed in information clutch are still living in the EPOCH OF GOSSIPS AND SPECULATIONS, not in the EPOCH OF FACTS on history of exploration and problems, associated with conservation bioresources of the Bering sea.

The sea, which is one of the world richest in terms of biological productivity, the sea where every new day of all planet begins on the 180th meridian, the sea that washes coasts of two great continents remains (as it was in Vitus Bering's epoch) a big blind spot in our consciousness. This spot wants someone to tell about it, its history, its calamities and hopes to as many people as possible. These people on their part could share this information with highest and most concerned agencies.

I mean that the highest priority American and Russian public concerned with the Bering seas problems is to apply all efforts possible to make secrets out. Only then we will be able not only to be clear in all problems of the Bering sea, but also to separate the husk from the grain, to identify the most important, the most significant and bring this information to the broadest possible public of our countries.