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The Soviet Union once controlled what was perhaps the world's mightiest fishing fleet. A wolf pack of ships moving around the world, fishing the nation's oceans and emptying them of life. The second half of the 20th century saw the industrialization of the fishing industry, and the Soviets were right in the thick of that. In this video, we talked the once mighty Soviet fleet and the industrialization of fishing. The Russians have had a professional fishing industry since at least the early 1800s. All of those fisheries were located in inland waterways near the big population centers of European Russia. The biggest fisheries fished sturgeon, bream, perch, pike and carp in the big Caspian Sea. They would fill a barrel to the gills with fish, salt it with salt from nearby mines and Reddit, and then shipped those barrels to the cities. In the early 1900s, the ending of the salt monopoly and construction of new railroads encouraged the Fisheries expansion. By 1913, the Russian Empire produced about a million metric tons of fish. Over 80% of that came from the country's vast inland water fisheries, over 60% from the Caspian Sea alone. This fishing industry virtually collapsed during during the Russian turmoil of World War I, the chaos of the early days of the Soviet Union, and the tumultuous Russian Civil War. In 1919, the catch had fallen to just 170,000 metric tons. As the population began to recover from those disasters, the Soviet fishing industry began a major shift away from its traditional inland fishing grounds towards new untapped waters. The completion of the Murmanse Railroad in 1916 opened up the massive Far Eastern and Northern Fission basins. The Far Eastern Basin refers to the Pacific waters of the Soviet Union, the Bering Sea, and the waters near the Kamchatka Peninsula and Sakhalin Island. Long unexploited due to their distance from the cities, they're rich in salmon and herring. The Northern basin refers to the Barents. The Barents not Bering, more near Norway, not Alaska. The top fish there are herring, cod and haddock. Most fishing activity was based out of murmansk. The early 1930s also saw the beginning of the immensely damaging Soviet whaling program. The Soviets purchased an American cargo ship and converted it into its first factory ship, the Aleut. Then came World War II. The war shattered the Soviet fishing trade. The Soviet fishing fleet lost almost all of its motorized vessels, up to 5,000 ships. Fishermen were drafted into the war, causing a major labor shortage. Various traditional fishing grounds like the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov turned into battlefields, destroying ports and shore facilities. In response, the Soviet government leaned more heavily on its Far Eastern and Siberian fishing grounds. Siberia grew from 55,700 metric tons in 1940 to 120,000 tons in 1943. The Far east grew to 400,000 metric tons that same year. After the war, after losing so many men to the fighting, the country suffered a labor and land shortage that badly hit the agricultural industry, meat in particular. So the Soviets looked to develop its fishing industry on on the basis of simple math, it took about 2,000 to 2,500 rubles of investment to grow a cow, but just 1,500 to 1700 rubles to catch a fish. So more fish. In 1946, the Soviets began scaling up their fishing efforts. That year they announced the Fourth Soviet Five Year Plan, covering the years until 1950 as part of the post war rebuild. The plan allocated for a substantial jump in fishery production. By 1950, the catch was planned to be 57% higher than what it was before the war, including a 2.5 times increase in production from the Far East. To meet these goals, the Soviets planned to produce over 150 side trawlers and 13,000 smaller fishing boats in the Soviet shipyards, as well as produce up to 1.1 million nets. The state coordinated the fishery industry's expansion and modernization. Educational institutions were set up to train a workforce. They funded new shipyards, processing plants and even homes for workers in the Far East. And from the very beginning, Stalin and his Soviet Ministers of fisheries, like Ishkov Alexander Akamovich, stressed the need to fish on the high seas of distant waters. Ostensibly because the Soviet Union's richest fishing grounds were far from its population centers, but also because extensive industrialization and exploitation have damaged the country's traditional inland fishing grounds. Years of big dam projects, river diversions and unregulated waste disposal drained and polluted the Aral, Black and Caspian seas. To pull off this sort of extended high seas fishing, the Soviets though, needed a new type of ship. In 1954, the United Kingdom launched the revolutionary fishing freezer trawler Fair Tri. The Fair Tri was not your average fishing boat. It was a 280 foot long floating fish factory, more like an ocean liner or warship for fish terrorization. Military equipment from the war supercharged this trawler's capabilities. For example, echo sounding and sonar technologies to find schools of fish. And critically, the Fair Tri pulled up its nets through a ramp on the stern rather than up from the side, like how older boats did. This underappreciated innovation made the Fair Tri more stable than its predecessors and eventually allowed fishermen to use up to 10 times larger nets. Once the fish is caught, they can be automatically filleted, packed and quick frozen right on board. And with massive onboard freezers, the Fair Tri and other ships of its class can store fish for longer, letting them stay on the seas for weeks at a time. The Fair Tri's launch made the British newspapers. During its inaugural three month trip, the ship pulled in 18 tons of fish each day. In its first year of operation, the Fair Tri fished 2,000 tons of cod, cut down to about 650 tons of cod fillets. The Fair Tri heralded a new era of industrialized high power fishing. And everyone with a brain for fishing knew it, including the Soviets. These big trawlers like the Fair Tri were bringing back more frozen fish than ever before. Just about when fish demand began to slump. As Americans went back to eating meat. Post war food product companies tried a few things to reignite demand. Like fish breaks. Frozen blocks of fish that housewives can easily scoop out like ice cream or cut into any shape. That did not quite catch on wonder why. But then in late 1953, the International Frozen foods brand Birdseye introduced the fish stick. Pre cooked and flash frozen. The fish stick turned the slightly distasteful looking fish fillet into a delectable, easy to cook, delightful. And fishermen discovered that you can turn any variety of seemingly abundant but rather humble looking fishesordinary fishes with low fat but white flaky meat into a fish stick Fishes like cod, haddock or Alaskan pollock. Similarly, in Asia, the Japanese discovered in the late 1950s and early 1960s that you can turn the slightly dazed looking Alaskan pollockfish into into a freezable paste called surimi. And you can turn surimi into other foods like imitation crab meat or fish tofus. When surimi was introduced in 1960, the Alaskan Pollock catch was about 25,000 tons. Less than 10 years later, in 1969, that number had exploded to over 655,000 tons. And with regards to the Soviets themselves, originally in the 1940s, Soviet citizens preferred inland and freshwater fish. When ocean fish started showing up on their plates, they ridiculed it, calling it Ishkov's folly after the Minister of Fisheries Ishkov to change their minds, the Soviet government set up marketing programs and dozens of restaurants and cafeterias to serve salmon, frozen fish, Alaskan pollock and shrimp. And it mostly worked. By the late 1970s, the average Soviet citizen was got over a third of their protein from fish. The Fairchild's ability to stay on the seas for extended periods was attractive to the Soviet fishing industry. So they bought the blueprints from a UK shipyard. And then in 1954 and 1955, they contracted a shipyard in West Germany to build 25 Fair Tri like trawlers. Called the Pushkin class. These were delivered as part of war reparations. As those were being built, Soviet engineers copied the blueprints and distributed them to shipyards around the Soviet Union and to satellite states like Poland and East Germany. Those shipyards started work on what are called the Mayakowski class ships. Both ship types were similar to the fair TRI, about 85 meters long, weighing about 2,500 tons and equipped with 600 metric tons of freezer space. By the end of the 1950s, at its peak, the Soviets were adding seven to eight units of Fair Trialike ships each month. From 1946 to 1965, the Soviets spent an estimated $4 billion to completely overhaul their fisheries fleet, trending towards ships of larger tonnages. Hands down, the Soviets possessed the world's largest fleet by tonnage, five plus million gross tons, or four times larger than than second place Japan. And throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, the Soviet fleet boasted over 11,000 extraction vessels and 17 to 20,000 total vessels. There were even fisheries research submarines and submersibles converted over from the navy and employed to study the behaviors of fish, as well as how old and new fishing gear might operate underwater. The Soviet fleets are run like a military navy, centrally controlled and coordinated by the government. A fleet has one or two large factory ships, or plavaza, at its center. The name literally means floating bases and serve as mother ships where the commodore and his staff sit. They also store fish fuel and provide medical support as needed. The Plavbaza are supported by a large group of catcher ships, medium class trawlers with or without refrigeration, as well as reconnaissance ships and airplanes if available. During operations, Reconnaissance units go to locate a shoal of fish. A decision is made and then the whole fleet goes over to the fish, sometimes hundreds of ships at a time. The government also distributes scientific data like plankton levels, water temperatures and other fish indicators to the commodores. The fleet is pointed to where to go, but individual captains are free to choose the specific fishing ground. The techniques for catching fish have been refined over the years. Electric lamps light up the oceans to attract the fish. Fishermen might play predator sounds to herd fish downwards into the nets. Later on, electric charges were added to shock the fish in the nets and keep them from escaping. The Soviets got the idea for this wolf pack style of fishing. From the Japanese. But they run it with militaristic precision and it far outclasses how fishing is done in the United States. There, individual fishing ship captains compete with one another, hoarding for themselves whatever information they might gather. Though conflicts between Soviet skippers are not unknown. Moreover, American fish boats needed to return to harbor every five or so days. The Soviet fleet, on the other hand, can stay out on the high seas for up to 80 days at a time. And trawlers return to the mothership to unload catches and reload. And the fleet will even receive relief rations from nearby Soviet passenger ships. In 1950, the Soviet fleet's average fishing distance from the Soviet shore was 200 miles. By 1965, that had grown to 1,700 miles by 1970. 4,000 plus miles. As fishing fleets like those from the Soviet Union and Japan extended their ranges to cover the whole world, they often came dangerously close to the territories of other nations. The Soviets and Japanese were particularly known for this type of behavior. And for years the Soviets advocated for free access to all the world's oceans. In 1954, the Soviet fishing fleet was sighted off the coast of the island of Newfoundland, encroaching on the traditional fishing grounds of American and Canadian fishermen. In February 1956, they were seen in Norwegian waters, where a Norwegian warplane actually fired upon them. In 1961 they were sighted in the Cape Cod area. President John F. Kennedy reportedly sighted them just a few miles away from his vacation home, which made the news. There the Soviets discovered a massive amount of herring. 400 and 500 Soviet vessels dragged trawls across the seafloors of Cape Cod, damaging the hatcheries and hauling up huge numbers of whatever was down there. When finished, the they moved south towards South Carolina, freaking out Americans of all classes. The government pondered the potential dual military civilian uses of this titanic fishing fleet, not to mention their disrupting of several important radar tests. An American fisherman complained of being harassed by Soviet ships and decried the Soviets aggressive tactics, including the use of very small meshes to capture fish indiscriminately. Then in 1964, the Soviets were seen trawling the vital fishing grounds of the North Atlantic seas. Another massive fleet of 300 plus Soviet vessels were also sighted that year fishing the seas of the Pacific Northwest. The year after that, the Soviets were seen fishing the waters off Southwest Africa. And throughout the late 1960s, Soviet fishing research vessels were sighted off the coasts of Peru, Ecuador and Chile, A prelude to the future arrival of the big fleets. For decades, the traditional territorial sea limit beyond the shore was about three miles. This was a centuries old precedent established literally by cannon fire. Three miles was the effective theoretical range of a cannon. Otherwise people had open access to the seas. However, as overfishing started to become a problem in the 1900s, international discussion started up about extending that limit. And when those discussions deadlocked, several countries started doing it unilaterally. Back in September 1945, the US President Truman unilaterally proclaimed exclusive control of the fisheries and oil resources underneath the North American continental shelf. Though as I implied earlier, this was not accepted internationally. In 1952, Chile, Ecuador and Peru declared the seas 200 miles out from their shores to be their exclusive property. That declaration was was unchallenged by a fishing whaling fleet owned by the Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. So the Peruvian navy seized his ships. These declarations of exclusive zones continued in the 1960s and this led to some confusion as different countries declared different sized zones. India had 6 miles, Mexico 9 miles, Canada 12 miles, Iceland 50 miles and so on. In 1967, the Soviet fishing fleet caught 677,000 tons of Jacquefish off the shores of Argentina. The Argentinians responded that same year by copying Chile, Ecuador and Peru and by extending their economic zone to 200 miles out from the shore. So the Soviet fleet moved up north to fish the waters of Uruguay. The Uruguayans responded by setting up another exclusive zone of their own 200 miles out in 1969. So the Soviet fleet moved to Brazil. And what do you know? Right on cue, in 1970, Brazil does the same thing all over again. Booting the Soviets back out onto the hydrological street. Meanwhile, as it became increasingly clear that depletion was a real thing and that global stocks of fish were declining to seriously low levels, the impetus for international action became more urgent. In 1974, at the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea in Caracas, the coastal nations made it clear that they wanted the authority to reserve the fish populations off their coasts for their own economies. Before 1974, the 200 mile zone was a Latin American aberration. After it was a widely held expectation. Two years later, in 1976, Iceland and the United Kingdom settled settled a decades long dispute over fishing rights known as the Cod Wars. The confrontations which could have seen Iceland withdraw from NATO ended with a 200 mile exclusive zone around Iceland. With this, the 200 mile exclusive economic zone became a widely accepted international norm. EEZ proclamations continued throughout the 1970s. The Soviets at first resisted the notion since they were the ones with the most to lose from it. They argued that with so many hungry people, fish needed to be caught. That it would be a waste to let fish naturally die without being eaten. But in the end they gave way, recognizing that if they did not concede on this, then even stricter measures might come about. The potential closing off of the seaports had military implications and so the Soviet Navy intervened. Thus, in December 1976 the Soviets themselves declared a need to preserve marine life and established a 200 mile zone of their own. Finally, in 1982 the zone became law. With the international law of the sea nowadays we basically take it for granted. But it is surprising to me to find out just how recent the actual law was. The establishment of the EEZs became a serious problem for the Soviet fleet because by the Soviets own estimates, some 85% of the world's known fisheries are are within 200 miles of a national shore. After the establishment of the EEZs, the Soviet fishing fleets had one of two options. Option one was to find new fishing grounds in unclaimed waters and records do show them fishing extensively in Antarctica. But that had its own logistical issues. The other choice was partnerships. In 1965 the Soviet Union established a company called Sov Rip Flot. The name literally means Soviet fishing fleet. Sovreb Flot was the legal entity representing the Soviet government in legal disputes, foreign trade, business transactions and perhaps most importantly, the signing of joint ventures and fishing agreements. SOV replot negotiated with and struck deals with various countries, many of which were underdeveloped. The Soviets provided a range of benefits Scientific information, infrastructure, investment or ships. And in return they got access to the eez. In the Soviet Union's waning years, the country attempted to make a series of market economic reforms. One of those reforms was to reduce the government's involvement in the economy. In the late 1980s the ministries of Fisheries ended Sauvre plot's exclusivity on international activities, as well as also ending the centralized control the government once held over the fleets. And then when the Soviet Union broke up into independent nations, the fleets went with them. A major event was in 1991 when the Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became independent and established their own EEZs. The Baltic fleets split off from the Russian, Georgian and Ukrainian fleets and reckoned with life on their own. These newly independent fleets can no longer rely on the cheap diesel fuel they once had. And they also lost the big Soviet market they once sold their catches into. Thus, many of the fishing industries were left with too much capacity for the size of their EEZs. Dozens of vessels were decommissioned and fishermen lost their jobs. The remainder would be chartered or leased by other countries to fish their areas. One final tragic legacy of the massive Soviet fishing fleet was its impact on whales. Yes, the fishing fleets of Japan, Norway, Iceland and others illegally hunted whales too. But the Soviet whaling program seems to me particularly cruel. Driven by target catch numbers automatically set and escalated from the top by the government's industrial plans and after killing, whales were routinely wasted. Massive animals like blue or sperm whales were so large that they could not be processed without substantial loss from spoiling. Worse yet, whale catch data was routinely falsified between 1948 and 1979. The killings of supposedly protected species like blue whales, right whales and fin whales were regularly underreported. Per the work of Y.V. ivashchenko, which you should check out, over 100,000 whales in the southern hemisphere were killed without being reported to the International Whaling Commission. Such falsifications laid undiscovered for years. A long running tragedy and a stain. Before we conclude, it is important to note here that the experiences of the Soviet fishing fleet are not unique today. The Soviets held perhaps the biggest and widest ranging fishing fleet. But other countries practiced the same industrialized fishing techniques. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and increasingly today, the People's Republic of China. Today, the PRC fishing fleet is less numerous but perhaps more prolific than the Soviet fleet ever was. China is the world's largest seafood market and fish catcher, regularly catching 12 to 14 million tons of fish each year. The Soviets did 9 to 12 million tons. And in an era when the global fish catch was far higher than it is today. For decades, people reaped the dividend of the free resources of the open sea. But the world's wild fish populations cannot last under such pressures. Keep it up and there will be nothing left in the wild oceans except algae, jellyfish and plastic bags. Maybe we eat that too. Alright everyone, that's it for tonight. Thanks for watching. Subscribe to the Channel. Sign up for the Patreon and I'll see you guys next time.