Russian fleets to renew fishing operations in Latin America as of 2012

Russia's Federal Fisheries Agency pins hopes than as of 2012 the nation's fleets will probably renew fishing operations in the waters of Latin America where they used to harvest as much as 1 million MT, according to Russian Fish Insider Report published by http://www.megafishnet.com/.

Peru

According to the Agency's head Andrey Krainy, Peruvian waters are the first region in question, especially taking into account that the nation's new leaders are reportedly willing to shift the focus in external trade and make Russia their strategic partner. Hopefully, thanks to such position the Russian fleets will be encouraged to head for Peruvian waters to hunt for fish there.

Since 2002 Russia has not been conducting research surveys in the Peruvian waters as "it has failed to reach understanding with the former leadership of Peru". However, in 1970-1980 Russian catches in Peru used to reach 1 million MT. Now, the situation with the raw fish stocks has changed, but the Russian fishermen can rely on potential catches of 200,000-400,000 MT of fish.

West Africa

Andrey Krainy also thinks Russia has got good chances to boost catches in West Africa as the country has already signed fishery agreements with a number of nations such as Senegal and Guinea-Bissau.

The fight for the West African wild fish stocks has been gathering momentum in the recent years with the EU stepping forward as the main competitor. Stronger interest to the region can be mostly attributed to a decline of fish stocks in the Northeast Atlantic, where the blue whiting stocks have dramatically fallen and the herring class has come down by 30%. Therefore all the NEAFC members have had to reduce their quotas.

With the contribution of the new fishing areas in 2011 the Russian fleets are expected to increase the nation's harvest by 3-4% on the record strong catch of 4.3 million MT in 2010, says Andrey Krainy.