Vessels

Fishing fleets of the Far Eastern Basin annually produce and process 2.6–2.8 million tons of various aquatic living resources including 1.5–1.7 million tons of pollock. They include modern vessels equipped with advance processing lines for production of a wide assortment of fish products.

About 200 catchers and processors of various types and classes operate annually in the pollock fishery in the Far Eastern Basin. The Pulkovsky Meridian-type large factory trawler Project 1288 accounts for the bulk of pollock production and processing. The vessels of this design harvest 50-60% of all pollock in the Far East. Depending on layout of their processing lines, these vessels can produce various products from pollock such as headed & gutted, fillets, minced pollock flesh, pollock milt, liver and roe.

The capacity of their processing lines is 60–80 tons/day of frozen products, up to 6,000 units of canned products per day, semi-finished fish oil extracted from liver of cod fishes for medical purposes – up to 2.4 tons/day, fish meal for animal feed and fish oil for technical purpose – up to 30–35 tons/day.

Other large fishing vessels are represented by RTMKS of Moonzund type, RTMS of Horizon type and RTMKS of Antarctic type, standard BMRTs built in earlier years (modifications of BMRT Project 394 and others) as well as custom-built vessels. Large-size fishing vessels account for the bulk of pollock catch and processing (about 80%).

The bulk of medium-size fishing fleets consist of STR of Alpinist and Nadezhny types, SRTM of Vasily Yakovenko type, another large group being more advanced SRTM built in Germany (‘Sterkoder’ type). The remaining part of fleets is represented by medium-size vessels built in earlier years (mostly SRTMs) and some other standard (SDSU, SYaM) and custom-built vessels.

Modern SRTMs are capable of production of a wide assortment of processed pollock products. Many medium-tonnage vessels are equipped with high-level processing lines for output of pollock fillets and associated products. Medium-tonnage fleets account for some 20% of pollock catch.

Small vessels and boats are normally not involved in the target pollock fishery and operate in the inshore fishing mode. Their percentage in pollock catch is some 1%. These vessels have no production lines and deliver their catch either to shore-based processing factories or to the board of processors.