Management agencies
In Russia there is already a well-established, comprehensive legal and policy framework aimed at developing sustainable fisheries.
Russian fisheries management is organized through a common coordinating agency - the Federal Fisheries Agency (FFA) that operates under the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA). The Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for developing high-level policies and fishing industry strategic development. The FFA provides operation management of fisheries.
FFA has the following key functions:
- Development of orders and regulations related to the fisheries management and enviroment protection measures
- Organizing of scientific research and survey for fisheries;
- Total Allowable Catch (TAC) setting process;
- Quota allocation among quota types, fishing zone, and companies;
- Perfoming of fisheries control, monitoring and enforcement functions to ensure implementation of Fishing Rules and enviromental regulations;
- Providing operational management of fisheries through FFA regional divisions;
- Advocating the right for public participation in the fishery management process through supporting public and industry councils schemes.
- Through CFMC Operating of the Fishery Monitoring System for monitoring and data collecting;
The Fishery Monitoring System (FMS) provides a central platform for data storage, analysis, and dissemination of fisheries data and statistics. FMS is designed to collect, process, store and represent data of the fishing and transport vessels and information on production activity of the vessels and fishery companies. It is available to FFA, FSB, fishery scientific institutes like VNIRO and TINRO, Customs, users plus others approved by the FFA.
According to the regulations, each vessel (fishing trawler or transport vessel) and fishing company is obliged to register in the FMS, with unique FMS code being assigned to the vessel (company) which is needed for such vessel’s (company’s) reports processing.
Data of vessels’ activity is based on the Daily Vessels Report (DVR). All information is transmitted by satellite or radio communication channels.
DVR includes information on:
- vessel’s unique code;
- vessel’s status and position coordinates at the moment of report;
- port of destination and estimated date of arrival;
- daily catch regarding each species of the caught aquatic biological resources;
- data on catching operations performed (fishing (catching) gear), total quantity of harvest (catch), number of operations and time spent, average depth of the operations, fishing grounds, etc.);
- total volume of the fish and other products produced from each species specifying the source of raw materials (caught or bought at the sea);
- detailed information on accepted on board and transshipped fish products;
- volume of each type of cargo/store on board;
- data on out-of-operation maintenance (type of out-of-operation maintenance, actual date of its start and estimated date of its completion);
- time spent for each type of activity performed by the vessel; etc.
The CFMC also performs satellite tracking of fishing vessels with mandatory installations onboard each vessel. Each vessel (fishing or transport) with output at least 55 kW and tonnage at least 80 tons must be equipped with satellite control equipment (VMS). Information from the VMS is transferred through satellite communication (by means of Agros and Inmarsat systems) to the earth station of the telecom provider and further to the FMS.
The CFMC is planning to introduce an electronic logbook system for the pollock fisheries within the Far East in 2016.
FFA coordinates a network of fishery scientific institutes which annually accomplish a wide range of scientific research in the north-western part of the Pacific, including surveys of walleye Pollock stocks in the West Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Japan Sea.
The leading role in fisheries science is played by VNIRO (All-Russian fishery Scientific Institute). There are 5 fisheries scientific institutes within the Russian Far East which are engaged in survey and research activities in the pollock fisheries: TINRO, KamchatNIRO, SakhalinNIRO, and MagadanNIRO . These regional research centers perform scientific functions on an autonomous, scientific and objective basis being inter-connected and coordinated through both formal discussion through several consulting schemes internally and decision making processes at industry level.
VNIRO (Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography) plays a leading role in fisheries science and serves from the studies of abiotic and biotic ambient conditions of commercial species to evaluation of biological and fishery productivity of water bodies, to the identification of regularities in the distribution patterns and reproduction of aquatic living resources, forecast of the state of their stocks and estimation of the allowable catch, protection of interests of national fisheries at the international level.
North Pacific research institutes include the TINRO-Center in Vladivostok (as a center fishery scientific institute for the Far Eastern Fishing Basin), KamchatNIRO in Kamchatka, SakhNIRO in Sakhalin, and MagadanNIRO in Magadan. These scientific institutes operate under the FFA Department of Science and Education.
To oversee and coordinate Pacific research programs, TINRO, established in 1925, and other research institutes have conduced annual expeditions since 1982 to survey biomass, distribution and ecological processes related to zooplankton, benthos, nekton, and nektobenthos in the Far-Eastern Seas, including the Sea of Okhotsk and West Bering Sea. They have identified and tracked key ecosystem processes over several oceanic-climactic cycles and measured impacts on a range of communities and species.
References:
Russian Fisheries Management System. FFA. 2011
Center for Fisheries Monitoring and Communication. CFMC. 2011
Information about Fisheries Monitoring System. FFA website
Presentation about TINRO. 2011
State Fisheries Register. FFA website
Cooperation between FFA and Federal Customs Service. FFA website
FFA international cooperation in fisheries management and stock assessment. FFA website
Plan on Sea of Okhotsk pollock fishery management in 2015. FFA website