MAKING THE BEST OF WHAT WE HAVE

According to research carried out by Azerbaijani scientists and international ecological organizations, the trend towards the depletion of the fish stocks in the Caspian basin over the last decade has acquired catastrophic proportions. As a consequence, fishing in the Caspian has become a more complex and low-profit industry. A solution to this situation can be seen in the subsequent switch from sea fishing to the commercial breeding of fish in artificial reservoirs and at industrial fish-breeding plants.

Declared the Year of Agriculture, 2015 will be remembered as the implementation of a new stage in industrial reform. Of late, efforts to modernize agriculture have been aimed at increasing production in the strategically important areas of plant cultivation, creating enlarged grain-growing farms, highly-efficient stockbreeding complexes, agricultural depots and export logistics clusters and, finally, setting up a modern technological base for farmers. However, against this ambitious positive background the achievements of one of the most important areas of the agricultural industry - fishing - have been comparatively modest.

The country's fishing industry has for some years been encountering serious difficulties: specifically, in the past 7-8 years fishermen have been unable to meet even the annually reducing fish quotas. For example, according to the Azerbaijan State Statistical Committee, in 2014 companies engaged in the fishing industry in the Caspian managed to catch just over 880 tonnes of fish against a general quota of 1,295 tonnes. So, despite an 11-per cent increase in catch compared with the previous year, fishermen met just 68 per cent of their quota. A similar situation with catch levels has been observed in a number of recent years, and this is happening against a background of an annual reduction in overall fish catch quota levels. By way of comparison, six years ago Azerbaijan's fish catch quota was 2,670 tonnes. The reasons for this "bad fish crop" are linked, first and foremost, with the complex ecological situation in the Caspian. The results of years of extraction and transportation of hydrocarbons in a land-locked body of water, as well as the practical use of the channel of all the rivers emptying into this body of water, are causing the depletion of the biodiversity of the sea, which has perceptibly reduced the areas for fish spawning. The emergence in the Caspian of various alien fish, such as the Mnemiopsis leidyi - a predator which feeds off the hatchlings of commercial fish and their source of food (plankton) - has also contributed to this negative situation.

Over the past 15 years the stocks of animal plankton, as well as a most important element in the food chain - sprats - have been reduced roughly tenfold. In turn, this has led to a multiple reduction in the number of sturgeon and other valuable breeds of fish that feed on sprats. It is significant that in the last two decades all the littoral states have regularly transgressed by exceeding their fish catch quotas, with most damage being caused by the activities of poachers in the northern sector of the sea, where the bulk of the fish stocks of the Caspian multiply and breed. The scale and activity of the poachers can't be restricted despite international agreements and the preventive measures regularly taken by the littoral states. And unauthorized fishing has long since acquired cross-border dimensions: in recent years a number of criminal cases have been brought against citizens of Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan carrying out unlawful fishing in the border areas of the neighbouring states.

However, the problem of poaching cannot be resolved at sectoral level. The measures taken would be much more effective if the states of the region properly coordinated the measures they are taking and introduced standard regulations on nature protection. Conse-quently, it also cannot be ruled out that local fishing organizations, which year on year are reducing their catch and not taking up the set quota, are not always observing transparency on questions of accounting. In this event, a certain portion of the fish catch reaches the shadow economy and is simply not recorded in the State Statistical Committee's data.

It is quite obvious that the problems of deep-sea fishing in Azerbaijan are also linked with the relatively poor technological infrastructure of fish farms. In the past - between 1940 and 1950 - when the annual volume of fish catch was about 21,000 tonnes, there were 32 collective and state farms registered in Azerbaijan equipped with specialized fishing vessels capable of working several days at sea at long distances from the shore. But today, the majority of local fishermen catch herring, Black Sea roach, mullet, Caspian roach, bream and asp, mainly using wooden barges or launches with an outboard motor. According to existing regulations, fishing with the use of such craft is permitted only within a two-mile coastal zone. And from the security point of view, one can only take to sea if the wind speed does not exceed 13 miles per second. Unfortunately, many fishing crews do not observe these regulations which, bearing in mind the frequent storms in the Caspian, often results in the loss of life of fishermen.

The reasons forcing local fishermen to move further out to sea are linked with the depletion in fish stocks in Azerbaijan's coastal zone. With the increase in sea level and change in direction of the currents, the migration routes of the greater part of the fish population have moved to deeper areas, primarily the northern sector of the Caspian which has a rich food reserve.

The reduction in fish stocks in the Caspian Sea area is becoming an increasingly obvious fact. In order to overcome this, in 2011 the Caspian states imposed a moratorium on the commercial fishing of sturgeon, extraction of which was permitted only for purposes of scientific research and artificial reproduction. In May this year, within the framework of the 35th session of the Commission for the Water bioresources of the Caspian Sea, which was held in St. Petersburg, Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turk-menistan agreed to extend the ban on sturgeon fishing to 2015 and 2016. This commission also regulates national quotas on commercial fishing of other varieties of fish.

Even earlier than that, the critical state of the natural resources of the Caspian prompted the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) to set up a special commission on fisheries for Central Asia, the Caucasus region, Russia and Iran. And a key task of the FAO is to encourage countries to restrict fishing volumes, taking into account the reduction in this natural resource.

An alternative to deep-sea fishing should be the formation of state-of-the-art fish-breeding farms and a transfer from fishing to developing renewable resources. According to the long-term predictions of the World Bank - Fish to 2030: Prospects for Fisheries and Aquaculture - in 15 years' time production at fish-breeding enterprises will provide 62 per cent of the world's consumption of fish and marine products, whereas the figure for traditional fishing is 38 per cent. By way of comparison, in 2009 artificial fish breeding provided just 45 per cent of consumption, with the rest down to fishing. This global trend has long since predominated in the world's developed countries. For example, for many years now the Scandinavian states have led in the export of salmon and trout, thanks to fish-breeding enterprises, and Israel is now among the leading producers of black caviar and sturgeon, having built ultra-modern enterprises in kibbutzes. Large fish-breeding combines have been set up in France, Italy, the United States, Japan and Turkey.

Comparatively recently this trend has caught on in neighbouring Iran as well, with special emphasis being laid on the artificial breeding of Caspian sturgeon. The Islamic Republic is planning to increase the production of sturgeon meat from 10,000 to 20,000 tonnes annually, and of black caviar from 3 to 100 tonnes annually. Another Caspian neighbour - Turkmenistan - also plans to develop its fishing industry in a similar way.

In September this year, in the port city of Turkmenbashi, the opening took place of a major complex in the region, the Hazar Balyk open joint-stock company, which will produce up to 100 tonnes of sturgeon and two tonnes of black caviar, as well as 10 million cans.

In recent years Azerbaijan, too, has felt the trend towards fish-breeding farms. There are 11 such farms in the country, and four of them are directly engaged in replenishing that most prized resource of the Caspian - sturgeon. According to the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, in the past 10 years about 5bn fish hatchlings, including prized sturgeon and salmon varieties, have been released into the country's basins. Last year alone, about 390.2m hatchlings, primarily types of carp, were released into the country's rivers and reservoirs.

The work of the Qabala and Caykand fish-breeding plants, which for about 15 years have been breeding hatchlings of the prized Caspian salmon and trout, is worthy of particular attention. This year the Qabala plant has for the first time embarked on the breeding of mottled sturgeon in the fresh-water basin. However, if you exclude the costly sturgeon and salmon varieties, the bulk of affordable commercial fish is produced in a number of private farms in Saki, Zaqatala, Qabala, Mingacevir, Neftcala, Salyan, Samkir, Lankaran, Massali and Naxcivan Autonomous Republic. Here, in artificial ponds and hatcheries, silver carp, grass carp, wild carp, common carp, bream and Black Sea roach are produced commercially. The technical organization of so-called "dam" farms is very primitive, but it is the production of these that forms the basis of the fish sold in markets and on the retail network in Baku. In the course of the year the country's pond fish farms cultivate up to 350 tonnes of commercial fish which, of course, is not sufficient to meet domestic demand. One may be convinced of this when one sees the noticeably reduced range in the capital's markets and retail networks.

Local deep-sea and pond fish is more and more frequently being replaced on the shop shelves by imported frozen mackerel, patussi, hake, pangus, perch, and so on. And some of these imported products have long since been processed and packed at the marginal capacities of local fish factories. 

That is why there has long been a need to increase the production volumes at small and medium-size fish-breeding farms, mainly through the introduction of state-of-the-art industrial production methods. In Azerbaijan, new, modern fish-breeding plants serving the whole technological chain - from caviar and hatchlings to commercial fish - are very much sought after. We can only hope that the amendments to the law "On fishing" taken by the Milli Maclis in June last year will help to solve this urgent problem. The law regulating this sphere was augmented by a total of 120 amendments, including clauses designed to encourage the development of modern fish-breeding complexes in the country.