Cort. r:c.

Discursive account of· a visit to the Institute for the Biology of Inland Waters at Borok (near Ryb{nsk, Yaroslavl province) July 18-25, 1969 -

w. E. Ricker (FRB) and A. V. Zasosov {VNIRO)

[PLEASE NOTE: The accent has been placed on transliterated Russian names to indicate to the reader ·where the emphasis· falls. J

.•· .. ..

·· . ; Discursive account of a visit to the Institute for the Biology of Inland Waters at Borok (near Rybinsk, Yaroslavl province) July 18-25, 1969

w. E. Ricker (FRB) and A. V. Zasosov (VNIRO)

In former years anadromous fi°shes ascended the Volga River and its tributaries for up to 1500 miles -- the beluga sturgeon and the inconnu being among the most vigorous. The town of Ryb1nsk 9 near the northern bend of the river, was a famous fishing spot, as its name implies (ryba =fish). Just above this town the first of the large Volga reservoirs was completed in 1941. · Although it ponded the Volga itself for no very great distance upstream, the valleys of two good-sized tributaries were drowned and much land lying between them, so that on-e town and many villages disappeared. The result was a lake-like reservoir about 40 x 25 miles, with two large bays to the north. On the peninsula between the bays the "Darwin Natural Reservation" was estabiished·where hunting· and fishing are prohibited: ecological studies are conducted there by the Academy of SciencesL, mainly in terrestrial and marsh habitats.

Near what is now the southwest corner of the reservoir, about 10 km from where the Volga enters it,· there was formerly ..

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a large estate belonging to a family named Morozov. During the second half of .the last century the son of the· house, Nikolai Aleksandrovich, a student in St. Petersburg, engaged ·in some unapproved political activity and was jailed for a protracted period. During part of this time he had access to

books and papei, read voluminously, ~nd wrote critiques and commen,taries. After his release around the turn of the century. he continued his studies in philology, history, astronomy, . biology, etc., ·became a member of the Academy of Sciences and contributed original observations in a number of fields -- a sort of latter-day Leonardo. After 1917, Morozov's history

as· well as his ~ccomplishments made him persona grata with the new regime. In his later years he lived in a house on the former estate (now maintained as a museum), and died at an.· advanced age while mastering his 13th language -- Hebrew.

Before he died, Morozov suggested to the other

Academician~ that his ancestral acres would be a gobd· site .for studies on reservoirs. The Rybi'nsk reservoir was only the first of a series projected for the Volga, and the same treat­

ment was being planned for other large ~iverso There was

eventually to be a very large tbtal area of ponded w~ter, so . the Academy concluded that there was need for research on the biology of reservoirs in order to take full advantage of their

productive capacity~ Accordingly the Borok Biological Station was founded right after the war, and was soon renamed the ·, -3- . Institute for Reservoir Biology. In 1952 the laboratory building burned down, but it was decided to rebuild and to enlarge the work. Later the name was again changed, becoming ·the Institute for the Biology of Inland Waters.·

The Director of· the Institute was and is I. D. Papanin

. ' ' of North Pole fame. ·Apart f~om Moroiov's homeg the original Borok consisted only of a few log houses. Roubles were scarce in the early years, and much improvisation was needed to provide scientific facilities and living· accommodations. As · an example, Papanin got hold of an ancient paddle-wheeler that could no longer ply the Volga, and ~sed its boiler as the basis. for a central heating plant. (New boilers were being installed at the time ~four visit.) Staff houses were built on two models: a single-family "Finnish" type and a 4-unit "German" type; water and sewage were laid down, trees and shrubs planted, flower beds laid out, and 3 soccer fields were cleared down· on the flats. At present there are 5 main research buildings of

11 :3 or 4 stories (each referred to as a. corpus 11 ), and a'separate Geophysical Institute. Another building, under construction near the water, will contain mainly tanks and pools for study of fish behaviour and expe~imental fishing. A grocery store, dry-goods-plus-hardware store, restaurant, postoffice, club (including cinema), and hotel (opened only a couple of months ago) complete the list of main buildings at the village proper. Workshops and net-lofts · ar_e near ·the boat-basin, and there is a -4- small laboratory building at the experimental ponds. The Institute also has a branch near Kuibyshev at the' towri of Tol'yatti, where currently the Fiat Company is constructing an automobile works.

Rybinsk reservoir is situated in a ceniral position among the network of inland wate,rways of European Russia. Going sputh and downstream you eventually reach the Caspian Sea, after traversing 4 additional reservoirs (one more is under construction) e Below the lowest· reser.voir, at Volgograd,. you can enter the Volga-Don canal to reach the large Tsimlyansk reservoir and then proceed down the Don to the Sea of Azova Southward and upstream from Rybinsk reservoir you soon enter Uglich reservoir, and above it can turn off by canal to Moscow; continuing down the Moscow River you reach the Oka and. eventually rejoin the Volga at Gorky. Going north from Rybinsk, a dam that raised Lake Beloe provides a waterway· to the Oneg~-Ladoga­ Neva system, connecting with the Baltic at Leningrad.· North from Lake Onega a short canal leads into the White Sea watershed, reaching the Sea at Belomorsk. Alternatively, you can cut off below Lake Beloe, go over to the Dvina drainage and take the longer river route that ends at Arkhangelsk. And there are also ac~essible reser~oirs over toward the U~al mountains, on the largest Volga tributary, the Kama.

Operating on this system the Institute has two research vessels about 110 feet long but rather narrow in the bea~, ...

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8 or 10 vessels of 40-50 feet rigged for side trawling, and smaller craft. At Borok a canal had to be dug in 'from the main Volga channel to the dock site, a distance of a kilometre possibly; there is a smalier boat basin as ·well, used also for· swimming. At the time of our visit their newest vessel, the Akademik T6pchiev, was operating in the Volga River and estuary leading to the main reservoir. · The c·ruise was in the charge of L. F. Shentyak6va; the 5 or 6 scientists and laboratory

technicians on board were all women; the ship's crew and.trawl~ master men. We spent two days with them, going upstream as far as Uglich -- an old Volga town famous partly because Ivan the Terrible's son, the Tsarevich, lived there and eventually died there (there are two versions of how this happened: either he accidentally stabbed himself when playing with a

knife, or he was murdered by someone among the monks (his guardians) who thought he was developing a disposition iike his father's and figured the country couldn't stand it). We spent the night tied up at Myshkino ("Mouseville"), formerly a center for the grain trade and attendant scavengers. There was considerable barge traffic on the river, a few large excursion vessels, and:also the aquapiane "Rockets" and ''Meteors" that handle between-town passenger service -- smoother than. the bus and about as fast.

Work in progress on this cruise was concerned with

effects of electric fields of various type~ on f~sh of various -6-

species and sizes in aquaria, including behaviour and blood analyses. A small trawl, operated from two gallows and brought in over. the stern, produced 50-100 lb of fish per 15 minute haul. Bream (Abramis brama) and blue bream (A. ballerus) were the principal species caught, these being the abundant large

benthophage and planktophage, respectively, of th~ reservoir. Other species taken in small numbers were pike, zanders (Stizostedion lucioperca), bersh (S. volgensis), burbot, perch, . chekhon (Pelecus cultratus), white bream (Blicca bjoerkna) and small ciscoes. Conspicuously absent were suckers and any kind of bass or sunfish. Some shore seining was also done, yielding bream, a lot of small perch and roach (Leuciscus rutilus), and a few rudd (Scardinius erythrophthalmus) and small pike. Most

of the~e were left for. the black-headed and mew gulls that quickly discovered what was going on; a black kite came over too, but decided not to take part. Other water birds around the marshy shores and adjacent meadows were a heron or two, black terns, mallards, teal, green sandpipers, lapwings, snipe, and even oystercatchers -- the latter a long way from any oysters. (Later Dr. Shtegman told me that here oystercatchers use small fish for food, stalking them like a heron.)

The seining was done on the inside of the river's bend, where there was extensive flat land. The outside bends .typically had steep eroding banks up to 150 or so feet high; the ship channel being of course close to these.· In the.

re~ervoir the higher-water level and wave action have accelerated -7-

the erosion of these bluffs, and several villages that survived

the flooding are going to have to move back gradually until ~ new balance is achieved. The top 4 feet of the cut slopes are ·liberally peppered with bank swallow nests; one would wonder that enough insects can be produced to keep them all going. After a final half-hour trawl haul for culinary purposes,.the cruise put in to port at 8 p.m. Monday.

Dr. Papanin nowadays spends much of his time away from the Institute, so we did not see him. Present was the Scientific Secretary, G. N. Rach!nsky, an old friend and class­ mate of Dr. Zasosov's, who is responsible for day-to-day operation of the complex.

The Institute is divided into a number of "laboratories", among which I spent most time with the Laboratory of Ichthyology. The Head of this laboratory, A. G. Poddubny, was absent in Italy. His work has been closely associated with that of N. A. Gordeev and L. K. Il{na. They have followed the changes in fish population in Rybinsk and other reservoirs from their establishment, including changes in species composition, year­ class strength, movements, spawning, and even absolute numbers in some cases. The 'general story includes: (1) early disappear­ ance of anadromous and rheophilic species; (2) increase of still-water species· that spawn on vegetation in the shallows, particularly bream, blue bream, perch, and pike, and in the

more southern rese~voirs some carp; (3) a later increase of -8-

zanders (southward also bersh) and burbot at the expense of pike, perhaps because fluctuating water levels in early spring make reproduction of the latter uncertain; (4) currently a

~tendency for the plankton~eating blue bream to increase and the benthos-eating bream to decrease, in Rybinsk at least (the

oldest large reservoir) -~ this corresponds to a decline in production of benthos and maintenance or increase of plankton production.

Trawling is possible in only limited sections of these reservoirs: chiefly the former river channels and larger areas of open fields. Over most of the Volga watershed farmed land is interspersed with wooded areas varying from small patches to quite large forests; and while the trees are removed before flooding, the stumps remain. To census the larger fish in such terrain, a surface-to-bottom gill net is ·set in a circle enclosing about 2 hectares, and about 100 marked or tagged fish of each species are liberated inside it. After a day the net is lifted, and all fish that have entered from the inside are counted, measured, examined for tags, etc. The tagged fish used have typically been caught and tagged earlier, so that the excitement attending that procedure is over; and tests with different types of tags and techniques show a rather uniform· rate of return, averaging 37% for blue bream. Hence the total blue bream obtained are divided by 0.37 to get an estimate of the 11 commercial sto.ck" in the area enclosed. The lower limit of length in such a stock is rather vague, being d~fined partly -9-

by the selectivity of the gill-net used, but it corresponds quite well to the actual lower length range in the commercial . . catches. From comprehensive coverage with this type of operation, stratified according to the four main habitat types in the reservoir, an estimate of the total blue bream stock in the . . reservoir is obtained. In Rybinsk reservoir a comparison with. the annual catch gives a current rate of commercial fishing of about F = 15% (ratio of catch to mean stock on hand). To this some sport fishing and poaching is to be added, but Gordeev feels that the rate of fishing could be doubled, approximately,

with benefit to the total utilization of the reservoir's blue:brea~ . production. This method is less suc.cessful with ordinary bream and other species that hug the.bottom, and figures for them are not yet available.

Distribution of littoral spawning in the Rybinsk reservoir has been one of the studies performed by Mrs. Il'ina (nee Zakharova), and the relation of its success to physical factors. Among the. latter the water level is most important, and this in turn depends on the rate of drawn-down in winter and spring: when levels are high and stable, aquatic plants flourish and the success of spawning is good& In other years many bream refuse to spawn at all and resorb their ova$ Apparently attempts have been made to have the water-use schedules of the dams take into account the spawning requirements. of the local fish, but wi t:hout m·uch success so far. They have, -10~

however, consented to regulate the flow of the lower Volga in spring so there i.s enough high water in the delta area for spawning and early feeding of the important vobla (a large roach) siock in the .bayous and flood plain lakes. Partly this may be a concession to sentiment, because salted and hard­ smoked vobla are or were extremely popular, and were invariably supposed to be served with beer -- something like the Digby herring strips that used to be available in wooden boxes before ~ the aftermath of prohibition made pl,lblic consumption of beer an all-liquid occupation in most of Canada.

But to return to Rybinsk, V. M. Volodin has been particularly interested in the reproduction, embryology, and early ecology of the burbot, and with fecundity of fish in general. Burbot spawn beneath the ice in late winter on sandy

or gravelly bottoms; the larvae are p~lagic, soon settling_to .· the bottom in shallow water where they hide under rocks and can be uncovered like blennies at Nanaimo; later they move to

-~eeper water. They.are a commercial fish hereabouts, though

not among the most favoured. V. A. Shentyakov was ill i~ Moscow at the time of our visit; he is occupied with improving fishing methods and'has designed a successful electric trawl, or rather electric gear to be used with a trawl. So far it is

not in commercial use, perhaps because of cost and/or danger~ but work is continuing. The "Shentyakov corpus" under construc­ tion will further studies of this kind. Shentyakov's wife, -11-

our cruise leader, is best known for her studies of scale structure and scale reading, but is currently occupied with effects of electricity, using pulsed currents with exponential

~and square wave patterns, as well as continuous and alternating modes. ,. M. N. Ivanova, ariother ichthyologist, is concerned especially with the predacious fishes in the reservoirs, and their prey. Small plankton-eaters have -invaded or have been introduced into the Volga reservoirs from both ends: stint (dwarf smelt) appeared spontaneously after connection was established with Lake Beloe to the north, and tytllka (Clupeonella) have come in from the south; Kuibyshev reservoir, near the middle, has some of both. In Rybinsk r~servoir stint are the principal food of the zander, and farther south Clupeonella provide the same service. Neither is a commercial fish in these reservoirs, and Ivanova concludes that everything is okay: the stints and tyulka need the predators to keep them under control, and the predators need the little fish to kee~ ~hem alive. Additional foods introduced into the more southarn reservoirs are mysids from the Caspian, but these have not become acclimatized as· far north as Rybinsk. Apparently Mysis relicta has not yet been tried there. Attempts to acclimatize larger fish are also being made: whitefishes of 2 or 3 .species in the northern reservoirs, and cyprinids of the Chinese complex in the southern. -12-

'The pond site at present has about 5 hectares of water in all, and additional ponds are contemplatect. They seek to reproduce rese.rvoir conditions as regards water level, . cropping, ·etc.•, in order to check causal relationships, and eventually to test possible modificatioris of· observed physical

or biological ~ituations.

The Laboratory of Phytoplankton and Phytobenthos· is headed by K. A. Guseva. I had a short ~hat with her, and a longer one with A. L. Pyrina. The latter says the primary production by phytoplankton in Rybinsk reservoir averages 2 . 0.5-1.0 gram carbon/m /day, in different years, during a growing season of 180 dais, or say an average of 140 grams per year. Larger aquatics· might increase this by 50% in some years. Fish production, according to Gordeev, is about

20 kg/h~/year wet weight, so that the plant-to-fish utilization is about 0.1% if I have sorted out the units correctly. (Fish yield is about. half this.) The figure 0.1%, through food-chains that must average more than 3 steps, is fairly good going. Very little plant food is eaten directly by fish or invertebrates, according to Pyrina, so that the step plants~ bacteria inter­ venes before any ascent of the food chain toward larger forms can begin. Also, there is a large component of predators in the plankton (most Cyclops, a few Diaptomus and certain cladocerans, especially the abundant Leptodora), so even plankton-eating fish are quite a distance from the primary source of food. Some production work on tundra lakes iri the northern Ural region -13-

has been begun recently, but no results are available as yet.

The Laboratory ·of Zooplankton and Zoobenthos is led

by A. V. Mon~kov. ~onakov i~ a rath~r young man, has spent some time in Egypt and Sudan studying the Nile fauna, can read and write English well and can almost speak it. (It is impossible to overemphasize how great an obstacle our archaic spelling is to easy international communication. Given sensible orthography, most scientists every0here would not only read English, but learn to speak it as well.)· The bottom faunas of Rybinsk and other reservoirs have passed through a series of changes since the original flooding. After the first year there is a tremendous production of chironomids in nearly all habitats. After 3-4 years ·the different biotopes come to differ: silted areas are dominated by oligochaetes, especially

the Neva Limnodrilus, others by midges, some by sphaeriid~, and Dreissena becomes locally abundant everywhere as an encrust­ ing growth, something like .marine mussels but smaller. In general, however, the succession represents an impoverishment, and an original 10 g/m2 standing crop (without large molluscs) is reduced to l-3 g/m2 over about 85% of the bottom. Part of the reason for this is that the substrate becomes poorer. Periodic lowering of the lake level permits wave action to work the shores over a considerable vertical range, and originally muddy or soil-covered reaches have their "fines" removed, leaving . sandy and gravelly bottoms in their place. In fact the whole history of these reservoirs, so far, has been one 9f progressive -14-

11 oligotrophication 11 rather than the eutrophication that is the big worry elsewhere. Perhaps they don't know when they are well off, but at present no one is very happy about this trend.

The former head of this laboratory was F. D. Mordukhai­ Bol tovsky (who does sp.eak English). After some years at Borok he went to Leningrad Un~versity, but has recently returned as a senior consultant with special interest in pollution problems in the Volga basin. The latter are at the moment principally oil refinery wastes, especially phenol,· and the hot water from generating plants.

The Laboratory of Limnology is headed by M. A. Fortunatov a scientist who worked on Lake Sevan (Armenia) during the 1920's, later was some years in Kamchatka, on the Aral Sea, Lake Baikal, ·and other places.· At present he is most interested in the comparative limnology of reservoirs. He has a card file of several thousand reservoirs throughout. the world, with their size, depth and physical, chemical,· and to some extent biological characteristics all entered. From him

I learned that the Hamilton River in Labrador has (app~rently) been renamed the Churchill River, which change was causing him some confusion with the Hudson Bay Churchill. Dr. Fortunatov enquired about studies in progress on Canadian reservoirs, but· I had to plead ignorance, with a background suspicion that nothing very much has been done as yet (I would be glad to be corrected). He also made a plea for a summary publication . , -15-

describing Canadian reservoirs, comparable to Thomas and

Harbeck's 11 Reservoirs in the United States" (U.S. Geol. Survey, Water S:upply Paper No. 1360A, 1956). Again, if such a publica­

tion al~eady exists I and he would be glad to hear about it. Another of this versatile limnologist's interests is in

f~Tmentin~ wine from local garden and wild berries., which he seals carefully in bottles with fancy labels. His Fragrance

of Borok (Buket Borka) of the 1965 vint~ge belongs among the · very best. Rachinsky too had some superior offerings at a degustatsiya.

I might mention that there seems to be no compulsory retirement age for scientists or administrators in the USSR; a number of active workers that I know or know ·of are past 70 Papanin is an example,. and there are at least 4 others at Borok. One circumstance that may contribute to this good survival rate is that their normal annual vacation is a month and a half long. Or perhaps things like Buket Borka may play a role -- who knows?

Other branches of the Boro~ operations incl~de the Laboratory of Ecology of Lower Organisms, the Laboratory of

Microbiology (especially of sedime~ts), the Laboratory of

P.hysiology of Freshwater Organisms (now headed by a parasitologist, G. Goncharov) , the Laboratories of Hydrology (head,· N. V. Butorin) and of Hydrochemistry (head, s. M. Drachov). The Laboratory . of Zoology (heqd, A. Vainshtein) includes a few entomologists· . and vertebrate zoologists. One of these is Dr. B. Shtegman, -16-

whose zoogeographical interests (especially as regards· birds) range across both hemispheres. He also is curator of a small museum that exhibits the local fauna.

The complete roster of full-time employees of the

Institute is about 200, of which 75 h~ve sci~ntific training. Among these are 33 with the degree of Kandidat -- approximately equivalent to our Doctorate -- and a few with the Doctor's degree. The latter degree involves no additional residence or "course" work, but another thesis must be defended, normally based on an accumulation of published papers.

Apparently no handy list of .employees of the Institute exists, but Dr. Monakov had one for the Laboratory of Zooplankton and Zoobenthos, summarized below:

Approximate Number in Title translation each cateqory

Zaveduyushchii laboratorii Head of ·the 1 laboratory \ Starshii nauchnyi sotrudnik Senior scientist 1

tvlladshii nauchnyi sotrudnik Junior scientist 7 · Starshii laborant Senior laboratory 2 worker Laborant Laboratory worker 2 Preparator Technician 5

Four of the seven 11 junior11 scientists were marked as having the Kandidat degree; as well as the senior scientist and the chief.

The positions from laborant on up require a university. . degree -17-

or other specialized training, and from starshii laborant onward

the incumbents have their own specialties ~nd conduct independ­ erit investigations, at least in part •. The preparators may or

may not ha~e specialized training.

From its early years the Institute has had its own publication, now called (after two changes of title) Trudy.

Inst~t~ta Biologii Vnutrennykh Vod SSSR. There is also an Inf o±matsionnyi Byulleten for short papers or preliminiry results. However these series probably account for no more than half of. their published work, the rest being widely scattered through Soviet and (to some extent) foreign j9urnals:. Voprosy Ikhtiologii, Voprosy Ekologii, Doklady Akademii Nauk, Zoologicheskii Zhurnal, Gidrobiologicheskii Zhurnal·and many others, as well as special mo0ographs.

In 1966 the First Conference concerning Investigations

of Bodies of Water in the Volga Basin was h~ld at Tol~atti, and abstracts of the papers presented were published last year (1968) in a volume called "Volga--1". This provides an excellent

general conspectus of work in· progress~ The 176 titles divide ·as follows: hydrology, hydrochemistry and water utilization (46); microbiology, phytoplankton and higher aquatic plants (27); . zooplankton and zoobenthos (35); ichthyology and fisheries (50); water quality and pollution (18). This represents the work of

50 institutes, universities, regional fishery laboratories,

public health stations, and so on. However, there are many more. r -18-

A map on page 63 shows the location of 77 research centres· in the.Volga and Don watersheds, but the Conference also included some people from outside this region. Bcirok was the place from which came the. largest number of contributions to the Conference (28), while its branch at Tolyatti had an additional 18.· The various branches of GosNIORKh (State Research Institute for Lake and River Fisheries) had 33 contributors in all.

Another volume given to me is· entitled "Circulation of matter and energy in lakes and reservoirs", published by the Siberian Branch of the Limnological Institute· of the Academy in 1967. It contains 38 papers on this theme that were presented at a 1964 symposium held at Listvenichnoe, a tourist centre on Lake Baikal. Seven of these were by memberi of the Borok staff.

There is a complete set of the Trudy of the Borok Institute in the Nanaimo library, and some other FRB libraries have at. least partial sets, I believe.. But as far as I know we do not have their Byulleten.