Russia: Just Fishing?

Americans are familiar with stories of Russian fishing vessels off our shores hogging catches, dragging their nets over our fishermen’s nets, and otherwise making life even tougher for the already beleaguered American fishing industry. Those accounts may be only the tip of the iceberg: There may be a much more sinister significance in the presence of large numbers—suspiciously large numbers—of Russian trawlers off our shores.

During a recent surveillance flight off the New England coast which I accompanied, a National Marine Fisheries Service official counted 72 Russian fishing vessels, 27 Polish, seven East German, six Bulgarian, five Japanese and one West German. On an average day, the USSR keeps two hundred to four hundred such ships close to our shores. In the past few years, according to UN statistics, the Japanese and Peruvian fleets have caught more fish than the Russians—yet they do not appear to find U.S. offshore fishing grounds nearly so attractive.

RP

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R. D. Paegle

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Americans are familiar with stories of Russian fishing vessels off our shores hogging catches, dragging their nets over our fishermen’s nets, and otherwise making life even tougher for the already beleaguered American fishing industry. Those accounts may be only the tip of the iceberg: There may be a much more sinister significance in the presence of large numbers—suspiciously large numbers—of Russian trawlers off our shores.

During a recent surveillance flight off the New England coast which I accompanied, a National Marine Fisheries Service official counted 72 Russian fishing vessels, 27 Polish, seven East German, six Bulgarian, five Japanese and one West German. On an average day, the USSR keeps two hundred to four hundred such ships close to our shores. In the past few years, according to UN statistics, the Japanese and Peruvian fleets have caught more fish than the Russians—yet they do not appear to find U.S. offshore fishing grounds nearly so attractive.