Fishing No Refusing

Do you remember the phrase: “Punishment no mercy?” We are also at a loss with a comma or, perhaps, with a full stop not knowing where to put it in a long story about Spanish-built supertrawlers, or the “blue ships” — that’s how fishermen call them. Therefore we send a civil inquiry on behalf of the Charitable Public Fund for Conservation of Bioresources of the Northern Pacific.

RF SATE FISHERIES COMMITTEE

CHAIRMAN Y.P. SINELNIK

FAR EAST REGIONAL AND PROVINCIAL

DEPARTMENTS OF FISHERIES

Dear Yuri Petrovich,

Your telegram № 2360 on December 28, 1999, contains instructions: “Question about bare-boat charter payment from RF budget not settled don’t consider requests and grant Dalmoreproduct trawlers permission for fishing till special order.”

On December 18, 2000, at a meeting with First Vice-Chairman of RF Government — Mr. Kasyanov, Minister of Finance, you got the following directions:

— Goskomrybolovstvo of Russia (RF State Fisheries Committee) Y.P Sinelnik)) together with Dalmoreproduct-Trawlers Co., and Rybcomflot Ltd. should perform calculations of project’s recoupment and of eventual terms of serving Spanish credits for building these vessels, proceeding from practical abilities to supply supertrawlers with resources against quotas of Primorsky region, and submit a decision on this matter to the Russia's Ministry of Finance by January 25, 2000.

— Goskomrybolovstvo of Russia (Y.P Sinelnik) should license supertrawlers of Dalmoreproduct-Trawlers to fish and assign Pollack quotas agreed for the year 2000, proceeding from practical abilities to supply supertrawlers with resources against quotas of Primorsky region AFTER (capitalized by the Northern Pacific Fund) placing US $ 16 million to a special frozen account in Vnesheconombank by Bergen/Rybcomflot and making an agreement with Bergen/Rybcomflot about canceling the credits Bergen received to build 15 supertrawlers in Spain, which debts are settled now by the Russian government according to terms of the Paris Creditors’ Club.

This agreement is to be concluded (from minutes of the meeting) by the Ministry of Finance by February 1, 2000.

Then, it makes no sense to us why Dalmoreproduct-Trawlers - Bergen Industry and Fishing Corporation have been fishing in the Bering Sea since January 1, 2000 almost at full strength, but most important against whose quotas — Primorye, Sakhalin, Kamchatka, Chukotka, Kamchatka autonomous okrug — and who authorized these unlawful, as we think, fisheries.

Communities of the Far East who have repeatedly brought up an issue of Spanish-built supertrawlers, which as it had been promised before they were built would fish outside the Russia’s EEZ, are anxious again but now about either changing by Dalmoreproduct its fishery mother ships (it’s not clear who allowed it, and disregarding demands of Far Eastern fishermen) for a high-capacity state-of-the-art trawler the American Monarch, or that it (Dalmoreproduct) is catching Pollack in spite of your ban and without quotas or any permissions.

Far Eastern Rybvody (Federal Departments for Protection and Reproduction of Fish Resources and Fisheries Regulations) are not entitled to suppress illegal fisheries but the coast guard is absolutely inactive. We ask you to inform communities of the Far East about this situation, for us, in our turn, to clear up the present state of affairs with Spanish-built supertrawlers for people living in provinces and regions of the Far East through mass media.

2.02.2000 г.