Russia's Far East has always been known for its abundant seafood resources, such as salmon, sturgeon, halibut, herring and so on. During the Most Glorious Soviet Period of Fishery, the Far East contributed 5 million tons of seafood and provided the Soviet people with a large amount of high-quality protein.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, fishery production in the Far East shrank dramatically, while the resources in the sea remained strong. In recent years, the fishing capacity of the Far East fisheries has been around 2 million tons, but because the processing capacity has not kept up, most of the seafood can only be exported at low prices or domestically.
Herring in the Far East
In terms of geographical location, China's northeast region is close to the ports of the Far East (especially Vladivostok), there are not a few capable aquatic product processing enterprises, and more importantly, there are sufficient labor and low costs, which is an advantage that South Korea and Japan cannot compare. Therefore, the northeast region has full potential to become an "agent" processing plant, and in the short term, China is also the most likely to become a big "savior" for the Russian aquaculture industry.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" > veritable "golden fishing ground"</h1>
The Far East is one of the most important fishing grounds in Russia, and there is no one, and more than 90% of the marine fish that come out of the water from here account for more than 90% of the country.
In the northern waters of the Far East (Laputev Sea), although the fishery resources are abundant, the annual ice period here is as long as 10 months, the minimum temperature is -50 °C, and the climatic conditions are very harsh, which is not suitable for the development of fishing.
In contrast, the three major warm-water sea areas of the Bering Sea, the Sea of Okhotsk and the Sea of Japan have more development advantages and considerable resources. It should be noted that although the Sea of Okhotsk looks relatively closed, it belongs to the high seas like the Bering Sea and the Sea of Japan, and is not a "private garden" in Russia.
In the fisheries of the Far East, Pacific salmon is caught at a large proportion. Pacific salmon are a wide variety of species, including salmon, red salmon, salmon, silver salmon and fine-scaled salmon. According to relevant international regulations, Japan, China, the Korean Peninsula and Russia are all source countries for Pacific salmon and enjoy the right to develop and fish.
North Pacific salmon fishing site
According to a report by the Russian Federal Fisheries Service, salmon catches in the Far East are expected to reach 459,000 tonnes in 2021, a 53.5 percent increase over 2020. If the weight of each salmon is calculated at 2 kilograms, Russia will catch 230 million Pacific salmon this year.
However, salmon resources in China are very small, declining since the 1970s, with less than 10,000 catches at the beginning of this century, and some species have been extinct for many years (such as the salmon masu).
In fact, during the annual salmon migration season, most of the fish are already caught offshore, and very few can successfully migrate to the spawning grounds – which means that most of the "cakes" go into the Russian and Japanese fishing nets.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" > Russia's "soft underbelly."</h1>
There are only a few countries around the world that can surpass Russia's fishery resources – unfortunately, the Russian fisheries sector has not "exhausted" these high-quality seafood, and most of them have been sold at low prices. Russian government officials also admit that for decades, Russia's aquaculture industry has been regarded as the most problematic and intractable industry in the national economy.
First of all, from the perspective of fishing capacity.
There are relatively few types of fishing vessels in the Russian Far East, and more than 80 per cent of them are out of service, with severely aged equipment and low fishing capacity. When the world's advanced fishing countries have been transformed and upgraded, Russia has missed two fishery revolutions in succession, and the "majestic wind" of the Soviet period seems to be gone forever.
Fishing boats docked in the ports of the Far East
In the high seas outside the exclusive economic zone, Russian fishing vessels are no match for those of the United States, Canada and Japan, and their operating areas are basically limited to offshore. As a result, The fishing intensity in Russia's offshore waters is more than twice that of the distant ocean, and it is obvious that there are many "losses" in the use of resources.
Second, the processing capacity cannot keep up. The number of aquatic processing plants in Russia is small, and the main processing products are canned fish, fishmeal and low-value products such as frozen fish meat. In addition, the processing technology of the Russian factory is relatively backward, especially on fishing boats, and the processing equipment can only be simply frozen.
Processed aquatic products in the Chinese market
In terms of horizontal comparison, the common aquatic products in the Chinese market are fresh, canned, snack, dry and health care, while the fish products in the Russian market are mainly frozen fish, salted fish, smoked fish and canned fish, and the added value of the products is not high.
In the end, the fish and shrimp caught offshore cannot be digested by the processing plant in time, and can only be exported abroad in large quantities. More dramatically, Russia also needs to import a large number of high-end deep-processed products from abroad every year. The low value of exported aquatic products and the high value of imported aquatic products have always been Russia's "pain point".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" > China the biggest "savior"? </h1>
For the current dilemma of the Russian aquaculture industry, there are no more than two solutions.
First, the government has increased its investment to help the Far East establish a sound processing system. Although the construction funds invested by the Russian side have indeed been increasing in recent years, there is still a lot of pressure to form a complete system in a short period of time.
In contrast, the second solution is more able to solve the "urgent need" and has an "immediate effect" – relying on the resources of the surrounding areas to jointly develop the fishery resources of the Far East in an international manner.
In fact, Russia's fisheries department has shifted its sights to Factories in China. In October 2019, the headquarters of the Russian Fisheries Corporation (RFC) moved to the Far East, which was previously located in Moscow, and now moved to Vladivostok (Vladivostok) with great difficulty, precisely to develop the "business" of the Far East.
It is understood that the Russian fishing company has not only invested a lot of money in the construction of factories and fishing boats, but also plans to seek more Chinese partners to jointly develop the narrow cod market in the Far East.
The narrow cod mentioned here is called Mingtai fish in China. According to historical records, the Mingtai fish was once the "life-saving fish" of the people of the Korean Peninsula and saved many lives during the famine years. The Korean people have a special affection for the Mingtai fish, which is regarded as an indispensable ingredient in national cuisine.
Dried Mingtai fish
Since the 1990s, the resources of Mingtai fish around the Korean Peninsula have declined sharply, and the fish have moved all the way north to the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea, and Russia has naturally "gained the moon first near the water" and "earned" a considerable amount of resources. Because the dependence on Mingtai fish has long been deeply rooted, both North and South Korea need to import a large amount of dried Mingtai fish from abroad every year.
Embarrassingly, as the largest fishing country for Mingtai fish, Russia does not have the ability to process fresh fish in time, and can only export cheaply or find agent processing plants - so China's Yanbian has become a "natural choice", processing 60,000-100,000 tons of Mingtai fish per year, and 80% of the Mingtai fish in the South Korean market come from here.
A cod processing plant in northern China
It is worth mentioning that there are aquatic product processing training bases in Yitong County and Dalian City in Jilin Province, China, which can stably export high-quality aquatic product processing workers. In russia's Far East, there is a serious shortage of labor and the cost of employment is high. At this point, China and Russia also have a lot of room for cooperation.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" > conclusion</h1>
Since the 1970s, overfishing has been on the rise in China's offshore waters, especially after the introduction of diesel subsidies, the number of motorized fishing vessels has soared, and offshore fishery resources are on the verge of depletion.
China's Zhoushan motorized fishing boat returned to sail
In the context of "no fish to catch" in the offshore sea, taking the initiative to reduce the intensity of fishing in the offshore is the only way out, and the transformation from the fishing industry to the processing industry is a good choice. In Russia, fishery resources are relatively "surplus", the shortcomings of processing restrict the development of the industry, cooperation with China can not only achieve complementarity, but also improve competitiveness, can be described as killing two birds with one stone.
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