Russians Use Submarine To Hunt Fish

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29744, 10 February 1962, Page 11

Russians Use Submarine To Hunt Fish

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) OTTAWA, February 8. Soviet fishermen are using a submarine to hunt fish and have developed a method of pumping them by hose from depths as great as 170 feet, the Associated Press reported. The chairman of the Canadian Fisheries Research Board (Dr. J. L. Kask) said in an interview today that these two developments illustrated how the Soviet Union was applying known but costly fishing techniques to try to become the world’s leading fish producer.

Dr. Kask studied the latest Soviet fishery developments when he represented Canada as a United Nations research consultant at a fisheries seminar sponsored jointly by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation and the Soviet Union. He visited Moscow and a number of ports on the Black Sea and Caspian Sea, where he and seminar delegates from the Sudan, Israel. Syria, Jugoslavia, Indonesia and Japan were taken out on Soviet fishery research vessels. Costly Techniques

Dr. Kask said the Soviet techniques were known to other nations, but were not being used elsewhere mainly because they were too costly. "The Russian fishing indusstry is a State-owned monopoly and it doesn't have to show an immediate profit," he said.

“We don't have much to learn from Russia as far as fishing techniques are concerned. AU we have to do if we want to increase production is to apply what we know.”

Dr. Kask said the Soviet Union had successfully used a submarine to study commercial fish in the Barents Sea and North Atlantic. He was told that if further submarine work proved fruitful several specially-built submarines for marine research would be ordered.

On tire Caspian Sea. Dr. Kask was aboard a research vessel which located huge schools of kilka—an anchovy type of fish—at a depth of 170 feet with an electrosonic detector.

In a night fishing operation, four powerful electric lights attached to an eight-inch rubber hose reinforced with wire mesh, were lowered into

the water. The hose was attached to a powerful electric pump on board the research vessel.

“Fish attracted by the lights to the mouth of the hose were pumped into the boat at a rate of one ton an hour. The catch for the night was 10 tons,” Dr Kask said. Second Largest Producer Methods of this type, he said, had helped make Russia the world's second largest fish producer behind Japan. "From past performance, present activities, preparations for the future and stated policy it appears safe to predict that the U.S.S.R wiU continue to expand and intensify her ocean fishing Into all International waters of the world,” Dr. Kask said. “She seems to be tooling up scientifically and operationally to do a thorough job."