Some Fishery Research Stations in the USSR, 1969
, LIBRARY 0, This series includes unpublished preliminary reports 150foRD Of CA*9 FISHERIES RESEARCH and data records not intended for general distribution. They should not be referred to in publications with- BIOLOGIC& STATION, out clearance from the issuing Board establishment and ST. JOHN'S, NEWFOUNDLAND, CANADA. without clear indication of their manuscript status.
FISHERIES RESEARCH BOARD OF CANADA
MANUSCRIPT REPORT SERIES
No. 1091
Some Fishery Research Stations in the USSR, 1969
by W. E. Ricker
Biological Station, Nanaimo, B.C.
June 1970 This series includes unpublished preliminary reports and data records not intended for general distribution. They should not be referred to in publications with out clearance from the issuing Board establishment and without clear indication of their manuscript status. FISHERIES RESEARCH BOll.BD OF CANADA
MANUSCRIPT REPORT SERIES
No. 1091
Some Fishery. Research Stations in the USSR~ 1969
by W. E. Ricker
Biological Station, Nanaimo, B.C.
June 1970 CONTENTS
Foreword 2
Moscow Days 3
Account of a Visit to Fish and Fishery Facilities at Volgograd, with Incidental Information 29
Discursive Account of a Visit to the Institute for the Biology of Inland Waters at Borok 42
Summary Account of a Visit to Kiev 57
Visit to the State Research Institute for Lake and River Fisheries, Leningrad 69
A Trip to Murmansk 77
News from Siberia 87
Visit to Georgia (Gruzinskii SSR) 103 2
FOREWORD
From mid-May to mid-November, 1969, I was in the USSR as exchange scientist with VNIRO, their central marine fisheries research laboratory. At intervals visits were made to other research centres. A series of informal reports concerning these was prepared from time to time, and these were distributed to FRB stations and laboratories. Origin ally I planned to delete the extraneous material and assemble these into a formal report for permanent reference. Further consideration suggests that this would merely lessen their interest without increasing their value, so the whole set has been assembled into this Manuscript Report. The first section, "Moscow Days", which has not appeared heretofore, is a straightforward account of VNIRO and other centres in the capital.
W. E. Ricker Chief Scientist Nanaimo, B. C. Fisheries Research June, 1970 Board of Canada 3
Moscow Days
By W. E. Ricker 4
Moscow Days
By W. E. Ricker
Of my 6 months in the USSR, about 4 were spent in Moscow, mainly working at VNIRO. However I visited some of the other related organizations in the city, and got a little information about still others, either in the city or in parts of the country that I did not visit. Short accounts of all these are attached. Working time at VNIRO was spent partly in the library, partly in writing a couple of papers dealing with phases of population dynamics, partly in talking to the staff about their work and ours. Professor Andreev, who is editor of Rybnoe Khozyaistvo, asked if I might have anything to contribute to that journal. I suggested a note on Derzh~vin's "biostatistical method'' of population analysis, on which I had done a little historical research in the library, and whose strengths and weakness seem to be insufficiently recognized by both Soviet and western writers. Dr. Zasosov was good enough to translate it into Russian. Dr. Andreev apparently has okayed the manuscript and it will appear in the May issue of 1970. The material will be useful in any future revision of FRB Bulletin 119 or similar work. Another paper, on aspects of certain reproduction curves, was translated into Russian by Mrs. Nazarova of the VNIRO translation bureau. Dr. Zasosov would like to have it published in the USSR, but I do not know the present situation. It will be published in English in the proceedings of the Aarhus conference on Stock and Recruitment. -2-
During all this time I continued to add to the stock of words in the Russian-English glossary of fishery terms. The present manuscript has about twice as many items as Nanaimo Circular No. 65. Visits to other research centres interrupted the Moscow sojourn from time to time. These are described in separate accounts. The map below shows the centres visited and routes of travel, also the locations of some of the aquatic research centres that were not visited. 6 -3-
The Federal Research Institute for Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO)
[Vsesoyuznyi Nauchno-issledovatel'skii Institut Morskogo Rybnogo Khozyaistva i Okeanografii] 17a, V. Krasnosel'skaya, Moscow B-140
This Institute is located in the northeastern part of Moscow, about a kilometre beyond the outer or "Garden'' ring. It is housed in a large green building built around a former church, of which some traces remain in the internal structure. It shares these quarters with 2 or 3 other organizations, so that the accommodation is crowded.
Like PINRO, VNIRO traces its or~g~n, in part at least, to Lenin's decree of 1921 that established the State Oceano graphic Institute (GOIN). The Moscow staff of GOIN was combined with an ichthyological group during the 1930's to form the present VNIRO. Formerly a number of the regional fishery institutes were regarded as branches of VNIRO--at Astrakhan, Kerch, Odessa, Riga, Tallin, Kaliningrad, Vladivostok, etc. These have now achieved or regained autonomy, which apparently involves getting their financial support mainly from local industry or local government sources. Only the Batumi station is still formally a branch of VNIRO. VNIRO personnel still work closely with the local laboratories at the operations level. One sector of the ocean that VNIRO concentrates on is the Antarctic, and their largest research vessel, theN. M. Knipovich, has spent several months of the past few summers down there (our winter). VNIRO is not only a research institution but can dire~t the work of students proceeding to graduate degrees. They have granted a number of Kandidat degrees (about equivalent -4- 7 to our Ph.D.) and within the last year or so have received authority to grant the Doctor's degree. This activity has nothing directly to do with the fact that a number of staff members have the title of professor. In the USSR the latter is an honorary title rather than one indicating a particular rank in university employment; many professors have never taught at universities. Another VNIRO activity is putting on training tours for foreign fishery scientists, as part of FAO's program in this field (other countries work similarly with FAO, of course). Some of these tours are within the USSR: Dr. Kask took part in one some years ago; others are on board research vessels. The present director of VNIRO is Professor Aleksandr Sergeich Bogdanov, a rather retiring individual of about 60 who at one time was welterweight champion of Moscow and is still active athletically (skiing, etc.). Shortly after the war he spent 6 months in the United States, and acquired a reasonable command of spoken English. He visited Canada in 1967 as a member of the Minister's party. Deputy Director is Professor Petr Aleksandrovich Moiseev. He comes from Vladivostok, where his detailed studies of groundfishes first brought him to western attention; he rose to be head of TINRO before coming to Moscow. During the past few years he put together in his off hours a 333-page compendium "Biological resources of the world ocean", published in 1969, that is full of useful informa tion. Dr. Moiseev visited Canada in 1955. VNIRO is organized into 5 Divisions (Otdely) of unequal size, plus an operations group (secretaries, translators, library, etc.). -5- 8
International Fisheries Division The staff is as follows, with some indication of their training and/or language specialty as far as I know them: Fedorov, Sergei Grigor'evich. Head (legal matters, English) Agapova, Tamara Ivanovna (English) Chevarg~n, Aleksandr Ivanovich (Japanese) Chubar, Margar1ta Teodorovna (German) Edel'man, Mikhail Solomonovich (oceanography, English -- on leave with FAO) Gusev, Evgenii Dm1trovich (English, Scandinavian languages) Kazarnovsky, Mark Yakovlevich (ichthyology, English) Kuvsh~nnikova, Natal'ya Ivanovna (secretary) Labunskaya, Natal'ya Aleksandrovna (biology, English) Ryazantsev, Yurii Bor~sovich (English, Spanish) Semenova, Ol'ga Nikolaevna (publications) Simanina, Greta Seraf~movna (English, French) Simbirev, Valerii Pavlovich (factotum) Members of this division keep in touch with foreign developments, make translations from and into foreign languages, and act as interpreters and experts for the Ministry on all sorts of official occasions -- receptions, negotiations, tours, commission meetings. Examples are as follows: (1) Fedorov is now USSR Commissioner for the Fur Seal Commission; formerly acted as assistant when Ishkov was Commissioner. (2) During the summer of 1969 there was an FAO Fellowship tour on board the Knipovich -- which sailed from Odessa to Rome, Casablanca, Havana, Vera Cruz and return. Mark Kazarnovsky went along, probably in charge of arrange ments; K1ra M1khlina from the operations group assisted with interpretation. Scientists included the Director, and Dr. Lyub~mova of the Antarctic Division, who speaks -6- 9
Spanish. There were of course non-Russians on the staff of the tour, and the Fellows were mainly from Spanish America. (3) In late summer a delegation went to the Commonwealth country of Mauritius (Mavritil in Russian) to negotiate for some kind of fishing or port privileges. Yuri Ryazantsev went as interpreter, and told me a bit about the country and the journey -- apparently it took them a week to get there, including 13 different flights here and there across Africa. The negotiations were evidently successful.
Division of Scientific and Technical Information This is a small division headed by V. I. Muntyan, with G. V. Martinsen an active member. They scan foreign and domestic literature and prepare bibliographies that are distributed to the staff every 2 months or so. Foreign papers of special interest are reviewed in the multigraphed monthly house-organ •iNauchno-tekhnicheskaya Informatsiya VNIRO". The same periodical prints a certain number of preliminary results of investigations by the staff of VNIRO and other research organizations.
Division of Computation Techniques This is the division I was most closely associated with, so can give both names and nick-names for most of the staff: zasosov, Aleksandr Vas!l•evich (Sasha). Head Aksyut!na, Zena!da Markovna, Senior Scientist Lokshina, Ina Evseievna (Ida), Senior Scientist Bl!nov, Vlad!mir Vas!l•evich (Volodya), Engineer Ef!mov, Yurii Nikolaevich (Yura), Engineer Bulgakova, Tat•yana Ivanovna (Tanya), Scientist (mathematician) -7- 10
Kuznetsova, Tat'yana, Laborant Azbolenskaya, L!la, Laborant One scientist and 1 senior scientist position are vacant.
I worked in the same room with Zasosov. He is a mathematician by training, a student of F. I. Baranov's. He seemed to spend most of his time consulting with people about their computation problems; these might be from VNIRO, from other Moscow centres, or frequently from out of town. Other people would drop in just for a chat, or with non-mathematical problems of one sort or another. When not helping visitors Zasosov worked on revisions or proofs of a paper he was writing, of a translation of Beverton and Holt (which he himself had made), or of some part of the collected works of F. I. Baranov now being issued. He also made frequent trips to other centres, particularly Kaliningrad where he was formerly Dean of one section of the fisheries college (Kalrybvtuz). We generally had a tea-and-sandwich lunch in the office. Our conversations were usually in Russian, though he himself would have preferred to get practice in English, which he reads well but speaks rather poorly. The computations that this Division carried on were mostly concerned with nets, gear, vessel construction, fishing strategy, etc., though Zasosov himself was evidently most interested in applications to fishery biology. He seems to feel keenly the gap in local expertise and international prestige that resulted from the Baranov controversy and the subsequent long period when mathematics and statistics lay in the outer darkness (relative to fishery biology) in the USSR. However this is over, apparently, as far as the Ministry is concerned, and in fact VNIRO is under pressure to get busy and computerize its catch forecasts, etc. As part of the catching up process, Zasosov has read Beverton and Holt and tran~lated a fair amount of it; has ransacked the Journal du Conseil, 11 -8-
JFRB and so on for population-dynamics articles; and has given lectures, written brochures and generally tried to stir up interest in and familiarity with recent developments. As staff member of an educational institution, Zasosov can have graduate students under his supervision, though these may take their degree at some other centre (university or fishery college). One such student was Shemina, who had a dry run at defending her thesis in May shortly after I arrived: it has to do with recruitment models. A former student was E. D. Karakotsky, whose thesis had to do with the pink salmon cycle in Kamchatka (see FRB translation No. 1214). He called in to see us one day: now works at one of the GosNIORKh labor atories on the Volga, and is concerned with gear performance.
Division of Technical Resources This division is concerned with fishing gear and fish processing apparatus, and has a staff of about 40. Three of its laboratories, and their leaders, are as follows:
1. Commercial fishing techniques Arkadii Ivanovich Treshchev 2. Mechanization of the industry Semen Solomonovich Torban 3. Net materials and hydromechanics -- Aleksandr Ivanovich Suchkov
Division of Technology of Fish Products This division has 9 laboratories, listed below with their chiefs:
1. General technology -- N. A. Voskresensky 2. Preservation by radiation -- A. V. Kardashov 3. Fish flour, food protein and concentrates -- N. I. Rekhina 4. Technology of invertebrates -- L. L. Lagunov 12 -9-
5. Fats and food products -- K. A. Morochkov 6. Technological control of production A. I. Golovin 7. Standardization of fishery products B. P. Nikitin 8. Mechanization and automation of fish processing - A. v. Terent'ev 9. Electronic and ionizing apparatus -- Yu. V. Gushchin
Division of Biological Resources of Oceans and Seas This largest of the Divisions was recently divided into 18 Laboratories, an increase of 10 or so. I visited most of these and obtained complete staff lists for some.
1. Bottom and demersal fishes Druzh!nin, Anatolii Dm!trievich, Head (sciaenids, lutjanids) Dubov!tsky, A. A. Currently in Cuba Efrem~o. Valerii (tagging, survival rates) Lisobenko, Leon!d Aleksandrovich (Sebastes, reproduction) Pshen!chny, Bor!s Pavlovich (SW African hake) Shubnikov, Dar Alekseevich. Currently in East Pakistan M~nsen, Laborant Selezneva, Tamara Vas!levna, Laborant Sinitsina, Laborant
2. Pelagic fishes Fedorov, Dr. Stanislav Sergeevich. Head Naumov, Vlad!mir Matveevich. Currently in Burma Serebryakov, Valerii Petrovich (fish plankton) Shabaneev, Igor' (tuna, anchovies, sardines) Sokolov, Valent!n Aleksandrovich (tunas) -10- 13
3. Marine mammals
Ars~~ev, V!ktor Aleks~ndrovich, Head (fur seals) Iv~shin, Mikhail Vasil'evich (whales) Krylov, V!ktor Iv~novich (Caspian seals) Medv~dev, Leon!d Pavlovich Popov, Lev Aleks~evich (seals) Taras~vich, Mar{ya Nikol~evna (whales) Zenkovich, Bor!s Aleks~ndrovich (whales) Dr. Arsen'ev is well known to those associated with the Fur Seal Commission, having succeeded Dr. Dorofeev who died in Seattle.
4. Commercial invertebrates and algae Ivanov, Bor!s Georgievich, Acting Head (shrimps and crabs) Bl!nova, Ekater!na Ivanovna (algae) Filippova, Yuliya Ars~n'evna (squids) Sadykhova, Inna Aleksandrovna (mussels) Tarverdieva, Minna Isaevna (king crabs) Tolstikova, Nad~zhda Evg~n'evna (algae)
5. Population dynamics and general forecasting Dement'eva, Dr. Tatyana Fedorovna, Head (catch predictions, Baltic cod, Caspian and Azov stocks) Gordeeva, Nat~l'ya Ivanovna (freshwater species) Gritsenko, Oleg Fedorovich (Sakhalin salmon and char) Petrova, Evgeniya Georgievna (minimum size limits-- Azov mainly) Saf'yanova, Tatyana Evgenevna (Black Sea fishes) Shubina, Tamara Nikolavena (Caspian sturgeons) Tokareva, Galma Ivanovna (Baltic cod, redfish) Zemskaya, K!ra Aleksandrovna (long-term forecasts, Caspian stocks, Baltic plaice) Shirokova, Elena Nikol~evna, Laborant 14 -11-
Dr. Dement'eva is a highly-respected senior investigator, who fell heir to the mantle of Professor Monastyrsky when he died in 1940. She successfully defended her doctor's thesis this fall, at Kaz~n University. Her group has the responsibility of bringing together all the regional forecasts to be fed into the master plan developed by the Ministry for the State Planning Authority (Gosplan). As a carryover from the Monastyrsky-Baranov argument, she is still somewhat suspicious of mathematicians, the local ones anyway, who (she feels) are too much inclined to ignore important biological details. However, she says she is under pressure to computerize her predictive machinery, and wonders whether this can be done without losing some of the information input. On the subject of Caspian sturgeons, she feels that the stocks and catch will not go any lower, and may increase a bit.
6. Fish management in inland waters Kozhin, Professor Nikolai Ivanovich, Head , , , Gordienko, Ol'ga Leontevna, Deputy Head Afonich, Ra1sa Vas1l'evna Bakshtansky, Erazm L'vovich (transplantation of pink salmon) Chernov, Aleksei Fedorovich Ivanov, Anatolii Petrovich (recently went to Iran) Korobochkina, Zena1da Savel'evna Kosyreva, Ruf1na Yakovlevna Nechaeva, N1na Leon1dovna R1kova, Tamara Ivanovna Rimsh, Evgenii Yanovich Soldatova, Elena Vlad1mirovna Svetlov, Mikhail Fedorovich 15 -12-
7. Aquatic resources Mitrokhin, Yurii Aleksandrovich, Head This is a new laboratory, and is expected to have a staff of about 8 professionals. Its work will be related to the "regulation" of rivers, diversions for irrigation or other purposes, and best use of limited supplies.
8. Acclimatization Karpevich, Professor Aleksandra Fedorovna, Head Burtsev, Igor Aleksandrovich (hybrids) Doroshev, Dr. Sergei Ippol1tovich (striped bass) Garaev, Rashid Abdurakhmanovich (Atherina) Gorelov, Vlad1mir Kuz'mich (hybrids, osmoregulation) Krylova, Vera Dm1trievna (hybrids) L1pker, Valerii Mikhailovich (invertebrates) Markevich, Nikolai Bor1sovich (Atherina) Nikolyukin, Professor Nikolai Ivanovich (hybrid sturgeon, etc.) Pomanycheva, Ol'ga Dm1trievna (kutum, barbel) Spektorova, Lyudm1la Vital'evna (zooplankton, Artemia) Strekhova, Tamara Petrovna (anaesthetics) Bushueva, Ol'ga Vital'evna, Secretary
9. Fisheries oceanography Bogdanov, Marat Aleksandrovich, Head Bogdanov, D~ni11 Vas1l'evich Elizarov, Anatolii Alekseevich Khatsky, Nikolai Vas11 1 evich Maslennikov, Vyacheslav Vyacheslavovich Pomaichuk, Sergei Illarionovich Solyankin, Evgenii Vasil'evich Timofeev, Nikolai Aleksandrovich 16 -13-
10. Marine geology Gershanovich, D. E., Head
11. Chemical basis of biological productivity in the se-a Fedosov, Mark, Head
12. Gear for open sea research; atlases and maps (plus the design bureau and mechanic&l workshops) Avilov, I. K. ' Head
13. Food and trophic relationships of water organisms Yablonskaya, Ekater1na Adamovna, Head (food and production of invertebrates) Chekhonova, Valentsina Ivanovna (seasonal changes in quality of fish food) Kuznichova, Viktoriya Ivanovna(food of invertebrates) Lipskaya, Nadezhda Yakovlevna (fish foods,daily rations) Son1na, Lyudm1la Vladislavovna Zheltenkova, Mar1ya Vas1l'evna (fish foods) Dr. Yablonskaya, leader of this all-female laboratory, was at the former Kosino Limnological Station when I visited it in 1936, as was her then boss and former head of this laboratory, G. N. Karzinkin. The latter is retired, but comes in about once a week, and still has one or two graduate students. The laboratory works on the Caspian, Azov, Aral and other Seas, usually in cooperation with local institutes. Work on metabolism of invertebrates is just beginning. 17 -14-
14. Bonitation Ne!man', Professor An!ta Alekseevna, Head (benthos, especially in Pacific) Kanaeva, Ir!na Pavlovna (zooplankton) Khromov, Nikolai Semenovich (plankton) Krylov, Vasilii Vlad!mirovich (plankton) Makarov, Rodion Rodionovich (crustacean larvae) Movchan, Oksana Anatolevna (phytoplankton) Pavlov, V!ktor Yakovlevich (zooplankton) Romanova, N!na Nikolaevna (benthos--Caspian) Semenov, Vad!m :Nikolaevich (benthos--S. Atlantic) Vlad!mirskaya, Ekater!na Vas!l•evna (zooplankton)
The word bonitation (bonitatsiya) does not appear in most dictionaries, whether English or Russian. However, its general sense in both languages refers to assessing distribu tion and abundance, in this case of plants and animals in the sea -- including their seasonal changes. Apparently they ransacked the Russian language, without success, trying to find an equivalent better-known word, and I can do no better with English. Members of this group are heavily represented in Knipovich and other expeditions, and have helped develop maps of the density of plankton and benthos for many parts of the oceans.
15. Underwater investigations (includes the aquarium group) Aronov, Marlen Pavolovich, Head Chestnoi, Vyacheslav Nilovich ~ , ~ Dan~lov, Igor' V~ktorovich Golik, Nadezhda Vitalevna , , , Pavlov, Oleg Pavlovich Vyskribentsov, Bor!s Vlad!mirovich Zusser, Sofiya Grigorevna -15- 18
16. Physiology and biochemistry of fish
17. Radiobiology Shekhanova, Head
18. Antarctic biological resources Lyub!mova, Tat'yana Georgievna, Head (ichthyologist) Kozlov, Anatolii Nikolaevich, Junior Scientist (pelagic fishes) Naumov, Aleksei Ge6rgievich, Senior Scientist (hydro biologist--zooplankton) Perem!tin, Yurii Ep!novich, Senior Scientist (zoo geography of antarctic) Pinskaya, Ir!na Ak!movna, Junior Scientist Shevtsov, Vlad!mir Vlad!mirovich, Senior Scientist (hydrobiologist--krill) Shust, Konstant!n V!ktorovich, Junior Scientist (marbled Notothenia and putassou) Sil'yanova, Zarema Sergeevna, Senior Scientist (repro duction of antarctic fishes)
The N. M. Knipovich had recently returned from its 1968-69 antarctic cruise when I reached VNIRO in May, and they had a seminar giving summary results. Additional fishable stocks of Notothenia were discovered, as well as of southern blue whiting (Micromesistius). However, they were unable to locate any dense concentrations of krill this year. The previous year they brought back a supply frozen in bricks, that was tried out in some of the Moscow restaurants. Another long antarctic cruise was scheduled to begin in December, 1969. -16- 19
Central Administration for Fishery Management and Fish Culture (Glavrybvod)
[Glavnoe Upravlenie Rybookhrany i Rybovodstva]
This organization should not be confused with Glavryba, which is the central fishery administration directly under the Minister. Glavrybvod is a large bureau concerned with promul gating and enforcing fiihery regulations, setting quotas and size limits for individual species or waters, and constructing and operating fish hatcheries and fishways, making spawning ground surveys, etc. It has numerous local offices scattered throughout the Union. Part of its Moscow staff were in the VNIRO building, part elsewhere. The Laboratory of Ichthyology of Glavrybvod is headed by Aleksandr Bukhanevich. He currently has a computer program to combine observed growth rates with possible natural mortality rates in order to get an idea of best rate of fishing for bream and other species in certain lakes.
State Institute for Planning Fishery Enterprises (Giprorybprom)
[Gosudarstvennyi Institut Proektirovanii Predpriyatii Rybnoi Promyshlennosti]
This institute also is housed in the VNIRO building. 20 -17-
Central Research Institute for Technical and Economic Information Concerning the Fishing Industry
[Tsentralnyi N.-I. Institut Tekhniko-Ekonomicheskoi Informatsii Rybnogo Khozyaistva]
This institute was organized in 1968 or early 1969. Its head is Professor Nikolai Nikiforovich Andreev, formerly of VNIRO, a mathematician by training and student of Baranov's. It currently has a staff of 400 (including everybody), and is expected to increase to 700. It is housed in an old building; funds to reconstruct and add to it were available, but as of August no contractor had been located. Professor Andreev was also troubled by ill-health -- in hospital twice while I was there. I did not get any detailed outline of the organiz ation and work of this institute; in fact it is rather fluid as yet. However there is a laboratory of Mathematical Modelling whose leader is Vlad!mir Alekseevich Kontar', with whom I had several conversations. 21 -18-
Kafedra of Ichthyology, Moscow University
I saw Professor G. V. Nikolsky several times and visited his group at the university. Their research program is centred about 6 main areas: 1. Acclimatization and culture of the Asiatic carps (3 species). Ver!gin is head of this group.
2. Population dynamic~and fossil fish faunas of Tertiary age. V. D. Lebedev in charge. This sounds like an unlikely combination, but the age structure of ancient popula tions is used as a standard to assess the effects of fisheries under modern conditions. 3. Ontogenetics -- of salmon, grass carp, etc. A. I. Smirnov in charge. S. G. Soin works on development of arctic fishes, at their field station near Kandalaksha. 4. Biochemical structure and metabolism -- includes a comparison of fats, and their metabolism; serological and paper-chromatographical comparison of local stocks of salmon and coregonines. 5. Fish behaviour -- especially in relation to olfactory stimuli. 6. Formation of fish faunas in reservoirs. 7. Fish systematics in general. Dr. Nikolsky has been active in this field, and recently K. A. Savvaitova has concentrated on char systematics. During 1969 a popular handbook "Fishes of the USSR" appeared, with Lebedev and Savvaitova as two of the authors. It is well illustrated and sells for a little over 1 rouble. 22 -19-
Students specializing in ichthyology do so starting in their 3rd university year; earlier years include basic sciences and humanities. During the 3rd year they study general ichthy ology; in the 4th year several fish courses: ecology, food, feeding, growth, physiology and metabolism; 5th year: population dynamics, migration, growth, zoogeography, etc., with many seminars and papers. In the 3rd and 4th years there is also field work or "praktikum'', and in the 5th they write some kind of thesis, emerging with a bachelor's degree. The enrolment is limited to about 50 undergraduates of all years combined. There are also about 10 graduate students, working for the degree of Kandidat -- at least a 3-year effort, with heavy emphasis on a dissertation. Dr. Smirnov was out in Sakhalin this year (1969), and reports that this and Hokkaido are the only places where salmon stocks are prospering. He attributes this to the oper ation of 23 hatcheries in Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, plus those in Japan. The young fish are fed ground fish, eggs of gadids, or natural foods in ponds, and are released at 0.5 gram or a little more. It would seem that this superior egg-to-fry survival has put the squeeze on naturally-propagated stocks whose survival rate is much less, because the part of the harvest that occurs in the common oceanic fishery cannot distin guish the two. N. V. Borutsky, another Kosino alumnus, is on the staff of the Kafedra, but works most days at the old University Zoological Mus~um downtown, on a monograph of certain plankton copepods (I think). The head of the Fish Division of the Museum is A. A. Svetovidova, currently working on cyprinids. Another staff member is Ina Aleksandrovna Ver!gina, currently studying the comparative structure of the digestive tract of various fishes. -20- 23
Institute of Oceanology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
[Institut Okeanologii Akademii Nauk SSSR] Sadovaya d.1 Moscow Zh-387
This Institute is situated in the southeastern part of Moscow on a back street that taxi drivers find hard to locate. It engages mainly in "expedition" work on large vessels, of which the V!tyaz and the Lomonosov are two. Consequently staff members are periodically away for long intervals of time. The Vityaz has twice called at Nanaimo --during the 1950's and in 1969. Of the several Laboratories that make up the Institute, I visited those concerned with nekton, ichthyoplankton, commer cial fish distribution, and plankton. Other laboratories deal with benthos, hydrology, hydrochemistry, and so on. Their staffs are as follows:
Laboratory of Nekton (fishes, squids, mammals) Parin, N. V., Head (pelagic fishes generally) Bekker, B. E. (myctophids) Borodolina (osteology of deep-sea fishes) Makushok, M. E. (macrurids) Mukhacheva, V. E. (goniostomatids) Novikova (stomiatoids) Rass, Professor T. S. (eels and various other groups; introduction of exotic species) Shcherbachev (pelagics)
This laboratory works mainly on the systematics of oceanic fishes. -21- 24
Laboratory of Ichthyoplankton Ostroumova (deep-sea eggs and larvae; pleuronectid life- histories) Belyanina (clupeids) Gorbunova, N. N. (scombroids) Kovalevskaya (Beloniformes--flying fishes, etc.) Zvyagina (carangids)
This group concentrates on the larval fishes taken so abundantly in large-mesh plankton nets.
Laboratory of Distribution of Commercial Fishes Marti, Professor I. I., Head Nesis, K. N. (squids) Vil~nkin, B. Ya. (ecosystem relationships)
This laboratory was set up rather recently. Professor Marti was formerly with VNIRO, and before that with PINRO. Vilenkin came from Sevastopol, where he had worked with V. S. Ivlev, and is much interested in ecosystem metabolism.
Laboratory of Plankton This laboratory has a staff of about 30, including laboratory technicians. It is divided into 4 groups or kabinety. The list of scientists below includes only the senior people.
Bogorov, Professor V. G., head of the laboratory, is also head of a kafedra in Moscow University. Primary production group Koblenz-M!shke, Olga I. -22- 25
Secondary production group Shushkina, E. A. (a student of Winberg's)
Phytoplankton group Semina, G. I. (wife of Beklemishev)
Zooplankton group Vinogradov, M. E. (also Deputy Director of the Institute) Beklem1shev, K. V. (zoogeography of pelagic animals) Geinrikh, A. K. (~) (ecology) Voronina, N. M. (Antarctic plankton, zoogeography)
Dr. Beklemishev has written a book on the pelagic environment that is being published in English by Oliver and Boyd. He also sponsored the English edition of his father's text book of invertebrates, which appeared recently. The Institute has a publication, Trudy Instituta Okeanologii, now in its 86th volume. The Nanaimo library has an almost-complete set. -23- 26
Atlantic Research Institute for Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (AtlantNIRO)
[Atlant!cheskii N.-I. Instit~t Morsk6go R~bnogo Khozyaistva i OkeanografiiJ
This is a major regional laboratory associated with the fishing industry of Kaliningrad. It operates mainly in the eastern and southern Atlantic. Total staff is about 1000, including ships personnel. The director is named Zemsky. During a visit from the leader of their Laboratory of Commercial Fisheries I got a list of the laboratories, as follows:
1. Commercial Fisheries [in general] (Head: Y~rii Sergeevich Sergeev) 2. North Sea 3. Northwest Atlantic (Head: Nosk6v) 4. Southwest Atlantic 5. Antarctic Waters 6. Technology of Fish Processing 7. Commercial Exploration
In addition they have a Bureau for design and construction of fishing apparatus. AtlantNIRO publishes Trudy AtlantNIRO. There is also in Kaliningrad the Technical Fisheries Institute (Kalrybvtuz = Kaliningradskii Tekhnicheskii Institut Rybnoi Promyshlennosti i Khozyaistva). This was formerly in Moscow (Mosrybvtuz) but was moved when Khrushchev decided that such things should be located near the industry they serve. (A mineralogical institute went to Khabarovsk in Siberia, a peat institute to the bogs at Kalinin.) Kalrybvtuz is mainly an educational institution, giving undergraduate as well as graduate instruction. Its research is concerned mainly with fishing gear, ships, etc. 27 -~-
Pacific Research Institute for Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (TINRO)
[Tikhookeanskii Nauchno-Issledovatel'skii Institut Rybnogo Khozyaistva i Okeanografii] 20 Lenin Street Vladivostok, USSR
In addition to the headquarters in Vladivostok, there are branches at several other centres on the Pacific coast. Kamchatka Branch (KOTINRO), located at Petropavlovsk, is about half the size of the parent institute. Its salmon research laboratory at Lake Bl!zhnee is across the bay and inland from Petropavlovsk. Sakhalin Branch (SakhTINRO), situated at the village of Antonovo, near Kholmsk on the southwest coast of Sakhalin. Incidentally, Sakhalin is said to have railways with three different track widths: Russian broad gauge, Japanese narrow gauge in the south, and a still narrower gauge in the northeast. Khabarovsk Branch, on the Amur. This is concerned mainly with the salmon runs of that river. Magadan Branch, at Magadan on the northwest shore of the Sea of Okhotsk. I got a sketch of this station when Dr. Zasosov had a visit from its Director -- Dr. E. P. Pravotorova. It has a staff of 16 scientists grouped into 4 laboratories: The Laboratory of Marine Ichthyology (including oceanography) is the largest group. The herring stocks of the northern Okhotsk Sea are the most important commercial fish in the region. One stock is in fairly good shape, one has decreased seriously. Navaga are of some importance, but bottom fish are scarce because of negative temperatures in the lower -25- 28 waters. The Laboratory of Marine Mammals is concerned with the rather large seal populations, of ice-inhabiting types. The Laboratory of Salmon and Char works in fresh waters only, and its present staff includes only 1 scientist. The Laboratory of Freshwater Fishes (other than salmonids), is concerned with whitefishes, grayling, perch, and the pike (Esox lucius) which occur in the Gizhiga River, having evidently crossed the continental divide from the Kolyma. Amur pike (£. reicherti) are confined to the Amur watershed.
Institute of Evolutionary Morphology and Ecology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR
I intended to visit this institute but left it too late. G. V. Nikolsky is head of the vertebrate section, and B. P. Manteifel of the invertebrate. Other well-known figures that work there include N. I. Chugunova, 0. Popova, Yu. Reshetnikov and N. N. Smirnov. The latter is Deputy Head of the IBP program in the USSR, and for many years worked at Borok. He called on me one day with Professor G. G. Winberg of Leningrad--world Chairman of IBP--who happened to be in town. 29
Account of a Visit to Fish and Fishery Facilities at Volgograd, with Incidental Information
By W. E. Ricker 30
Account of a visit to fish and fishery facilities at Volgograd, with incidental information
By W. E. Ricker
Jason and his argonauts, somewhere about 1500 B.C., sailed into the Black Sea, ascended a large river, and then entered another large sea. Eventually they got home again. The sailing directions have not survived, so there is dispute as to where exactly they went. Some say they went up the Danube and crossed over either to the Rhine, or to the Rhone, or through some pass to the Adriatic, all of which routes present difficulties. A more interesting theory is that they entered the Sea of Azov and sailed up the Don River and its tributary the Manych which then carried the waters of the Caspian Sea out to the ocean. Such an outlet did exist during earlier pos~glacial times, but the fact that it was still operating (or had temporarily been re-established) as late as 3500 years ago has apparently not been verified. To get the water over the present divide between the two seas would require a level in the Caspian about 25 metres higher than that in the Black Sea, and 52 metres higher than the present Caspian. To-day this would extend the Caspian northward so that the Volga delta would begin at Kuibyshev; however it is possible that the height of land between the two seas may have risen somewhat since 1500 B.C. At any rate, by about 500 B.C. this outlet no longer existed. Most classical writers knew the Caspian was an isolated basin, and it bothered them. Aristotle postulated an underground channel to carry away the water. By 100 B.C. the level of the sea was lower than at present, as shown by archaeological sites of that age which have recently been partly exposted by the falling waters. -2- 31
Levels less than to-day's persisted throughout most of historic time. The foundations of many old buildings, quarries, port facilities, etc., can be located beneath the water, for example at Baku in Azerbaijan and at Derbent in Dagestan. Record lows (as far as known) were reached in the 7th century A.D. and again about 1235 A.D. -- these being at least 5 metres below the present surface. Subsequently there was a rise, not very well located in time, but by 1500 the water had reached about the same height as now. On a 15th-century French edition of an earlier Italian map there is an inscription added to the effect that the large bay of Kara-Bogaz-Gol, on the eastern side of the sea, had been closed off by an earthquake and as a result the sea-level had immediately begun to rise so that "d,ja plusiers bonnes villes ont 't' d'struites, de telle maniere qu'elle finira par entrer dans la mer de Tana [the Sea of Azov]." Unfortunately no dates are given, and of course the final prediction did not come true. It isa.fact that Kara Bogaz-Gol, situated in a desert region, has a high evaporation loss and hence fairly large net inflow from the Caspian each year; also, the channel that joins it to the sea is merely a gap between sandspits and was closed off by a storm once during the 1920's --nothing as serious as an earthquake is required. One plan suggested for controlling the level of the sea to-day is artificial closure of Kara-Bogaz-Gol and regulation of the amount of water entering it, but so far this has not been done. If this channel really was closed during .the 14th or 15th century, it must have opened again during the 16th, for by 1600 A.D. the sea-level was back to the middle-ages norm of about 4 metres below the present.
But during the 17th century the climatic change began that produced the "Little Ice Age", from which we have not yet completely emerged. Temperatures declined and glaciers advanced in Switzerland, Iceland, North America and throughout the world. 32 -3-
In the Caspian region this meant less evaporation and probably a greater annual inflow from the rivers. The sea surface rose again and by the end of the century stood 2.5 metres above the present level. With fluctuations of the order of ±0.5 metre this level persisted up to the middle 1930's. Then the water fell 1.6 metres in 7 years, and by smaller amounts subsequently, so that now it averages 2.5 metres less than earlier in the century. These changes in the level of the Caspian have of course been accompanied by fairly large changes in its area, particularly along the northeastern coast. As late as 1934-35 the last of Professor Knipovich's Caspian expeditions spent much time studying the biology and fisheries of Komsomolets Bay -- a hook-shaped indentation about 150 miles long; to-day this bay no longer exists. As the northern part of the sea has become smaller, shallower and fresher, it has tended to freeze more solidly in winter, and ice damage has increased from floes that drift south. The large seal population has a more secure base for pupping, but hunting them has become easier.
Caspian and Volga Fishes
How have these changes affected the fish populations of the Caspian? Presumably they too have had their ups and downs. They must have enjoyed the 200 years or so between 1700 and 1900, when there were high water levels, broad feeding grounds, unobstructed passage up the rivers, and a light or moderate rate of fishing. The most prized species in the sea are the large anadromous fishes: beluga sturgeon (Huso huso), Russian sturgeon or ositr (Acipenser.galdenst~dti), sevryuga (8. stellatus), Caspian salmon (a form of Salmo salar or of ~· trutta -- experts -4- 33 differ), and inconnu (Stenodus leucichthys). The beluga, salmon and inconnu ascended the large rivers for long distances to spawning grounds in the Caucasus or in the Ural mountains -- up to 4000 km in the latter instance, according to one informant. Osetr and sevryuga were usually satisfied with distances up to one or two thousand kilometres. With the exception of inconnu, each species had a spring and an autumn "race", the latter wintering-over in fresh water. Since these fish have been fished all along their migration route for as long as records exist, the statement about a moderate level of exploitation might be questioned. However, sturgeons up to age 40, 50 or more years were taken, and the average age in the catch was in the range of 15 to 30 years, for different species, so survival rate must have been good. An important consideration is the fact that these sturgeons spawn only at intervals of several years, hence don't have to make the dangerous river trip too often. In the sea they were fairly safe prior to the introduc tion of trawling (which is now restricted so as to minimize the take of small sturgeons). Next in importance among Caspian fishes are the "semi-anadromous" species that spawn in or near the deltas of the large rivers, especially the Volga. Most abundant by far is the vobla, a form of roach (Leuciscus rutilus); there are also bream (Abramis brama), carp and other cyprinids, large catfish (Silurus) and zanders (Stizostedion lucioperca). Shads of the genus Alosa (or Caspialosa) are rich in species and in individuals. Their speciation parallels that of the whitefishes and ciscoes: there are both plankton-eating and bottom-feeding types, and each includes both the long~distance anadromous and the lazier semi-anadromous kinds. Other abundant clupeids in the sea are three forms of Clupeonella the latter a small sprat-like fish that appears regularly as a zakuska on the menus of Moscow restaurants. -5- 34
Bones, scales, scutes and fin spines from archae ological and historical sites throughout the basins of the Volga, Don and Dnepr testify to the antiquity and persistence of fishing as a way of life in this region. Professor V. D. Lebedev of Moscow University summarized this information in a monograph several years ago. Ages determined from this material commonly indicate a considerably older age structure than prevails in present catches, though it is arguable whether it can represent a truly "natural" mortality rate, as has sometimes been assumed. As for the antiquity of caviar as a preferred item of food, I have no definite information. Pliny the Elder (1st century A.D.) described the inhabitants of an island in the Caspian Sea "who eat birds' eggs and grain". One would like to substitute "fish eggs" here and develop a picture of a tribe of early gourmets, but there is no support for such a proposal. At present caviar (ikra) is as highly esteemed and as expensive in the USSR as anywher~ else. Not only sturgeon eggs, but red caviar from eggs of salmon and trout are considered a great delicacy, and are difficult to obtain. Among sturgeon, sevryuga produce the best caviar, and also the tastiest and tenderest meat, according to local connoisseurs. (My sampling of the meat confirms this: beluga and to a less extent osetr tend to have tough connective tissue between the myomeres.) Sevryuga also mature somewhat earlier than the two larger species, so would be a preferred object if introduction of an additional sturgeon to North America were under consideration. While we have no Caspian Sea, some of the larger lakes might offer prospects. The best place to see live Caspian sturgeon to-day is at Volgograd. Here is located the first dam of the Volga "cascade". About 500,000 sturgeons, of the three species, arrive there each yeart though how long this will continue is a matter for conjecture. Here too are located the Volgograd -6- 35 sturgeon Hatchery, the Volgograd branch of the State Research Institute for Lake and River Fisheries (GosNIORKh), and the Fisheries Administration office for the Lower Volga (Nizhne volzhrybvod). I visited these organizations June 16-20, in the company of Anatolii Petrovich Ivanov of VNIRO.
Volga Sturgeon Hatchery (Volgogradskii Osetrovyi Rybovodnyi Zavod)
The hatchery site is on the left bank of the Volga across from Volgograd and half a mile below the entrance of the ship canal. Its only source of water is the Volga River itself. The Superintendent, Alexei Mikhailovich Lubyansky, and Chief Fish Culturist, Vera Petrovna Yazeva, showed us around. They raise beluga, sevryuga and inconnu. Beluga arrive at the dam in April, but are then far from ripe. They are caught in gill nets and taken by barge to the hatchery, to be held in a pond which the sun warms to 8° or so above river temperature, and after about a month they are nearly mature. An injection of pituitary hormone triggers the final ripening, and a day later they are ready for stripping. The fish are killed, eggs taken and fertilized, then incubated in troughs where the water is periodically stirred from below by a paddle operated by the overflow water from the trough. Sturgeon eggs are apparently less sensitive than salmon eggs, for they did not hesitate to stir them by hand. The incubation water is from a pond where it has been warmed well above river temperature. I saw no sign of fungus on the eggs. The young fish are first put into screen cages suspended in a pond and fed with planktons thus protecting them from predators such as the notostracan Apus, which flourishes in the ponds. Later they are transferred to the rearing ponds -- these total more than 100 hectares in area. By the end of May the young belugas are 5 to 8 grams in size, 36 -7- the ponds are drawn down, and they are released directly into the Volga. We saw some of the last of them sent on their way.
Meantime sevryuga have been arriving at the dam~ starting in late May. They arrive in near-mature condition, so no long holding period is required. They are caught» injected, held overnight in a small concrete tank, and next day are stripped. Incubation and pond rearing are as for belugas. The fingerlings are released in late summer at about 2 grams weight considerably less than the beluga. There is concern about a large immediate loss from predation in the Volga, and a proposal to by-pass this by carrying the young sevryuga down to the sea in a barge; but this has not yet been tried. Belugas are larger and have sharper scutes, and appear much less frequently in predator stomachs. Formerly the hatchery also reared some osetr, but these were more difficult to handle, apparently, and are no longer used. Total output has increased to about 10 million sturgeon fingerlings of the two species. There are about 20 sturgeon hatcheries in the USSR, producing about 50 million fingerlings in all; hence the Volgograd establishment is one of the larger ones, perhaps the largest. They aim at a "commercial return" of 2%, but there are some doubts whether this is being achieved at present, or indeed is really practical. The other branch of operations at the hatchery is with the inconnu. Survival of the Caspian form of this fish depends entirely on their success, since its former spawning grounds are now completely cut off by dams. At the time of our visit brood stock was being held for maturation in large indoor tanks. Eggs are hatched in glass jars like whitefish eggs, and the young fish reared to about 4 grams in ponds. About a million are produced each yearo The operation requires a good supply of cooled and filtered water, for which there is -8- 37 a rather elaborate setup. It is recirculated of course. I enquired about power failure. They have no standby generator, but have taken advantage of the complexity of Russian electrical operation~ to have power brought in from two entirely separate sources. So far th~ two have not failed simultaneously. (Domestic power in Moscow is supplied at two different voltages, 127 and 220, more or less randomly scattered across the city, However, power lines there are all underground, eliminating one item that blights the landscape in our cities.) After the tour of the hatchery the Superintendent invited us to lunch on board his largest 'kater'. We went upriver past the canal and tied up to a sandy willow-covered island half a mile below the dam, where orioles were singing and a hoopoe called. Lunch consisted of a big bowl of caviar, hard-boiled eggs, a cucumber or two, and chunks of grilled sevryuga -- the latter exceptionally tasty.
Lower Volga Fisheries Administration
Regional Supervisor of Fisheries is Savelii Vladfmir ovich Rozental, and his top assistant is Senior Fish Manager Polfna Gavrflovna Khomutova. They are responsible mainly for enforcing fishing regulations, and the Hatchery and fish locks come under their general supervision. They do not directly operate actual commercial fishing operations, these being run by collectives in this area. The enforcement job must be fairly rugged. On a poster stand outside the building there were pictures of 10 or 12 employees and former employees who had performed especially long or meritorious service. Two of these were labelled "killed by poachers". The dam on the Volga is provided with two fish locks that work alternately, day and night. They are situated about the middle of the dam, next to the turbines, Fish enter a 38 -9-
sluiceway about 600 feet long and 40 feet wide. Every 2 hours a barrier is dropped at the entrance and moved slowly upstream, herding the fish into the lock shaft. The latter is then closed tightly below, gradually filled with water, and a false bottom of screen is raised to encourage the fish to rise to reservoir level. Near the top they are almost "dried up'' on the screen for a moment so their numbers can be estimated, or counted from a photograph. The whole process takes 45 minutes, and is controlled automatically. The fish that came up while we were there were some hundreds of shad, about 200 white bream and other cyprinids, the same number of chekhon~ a dozen or so each of perch, zanders and catfish, half a dozen sevryuga, 3 large osetr, and several grass carp -- the latter an import from Asia that is now established in the Volga. Designed primarily for sturgeons, these locks raise about 50,000 of them each year. Another 50,000 or so are netted and taken by barge up through the canal. Thus about 20% of the sturgeons arriving get by the dam. The fact the number is not larger is not too worrisome, because there is only a limited mileage of river suitable for spawning at the head of this reservoir and the next one (which also has fish locks). Some at least of the sturgeon released above the dam eventually return downriver safely; tagged individuals have been recaptured as far away as Persia 1000 miles or so. The number of shad passed per year is of the order of a million.
Volgograd Branch of GosNIORKh
GosNIORKh, with headquarters in Leningrad, has 25 or more regional branches, that at Volgograd being one of the smaller ones. Its Director is Vasilii Vas{levich Vas{l'ev, and the "Zav" or head of its Sturgeon Laboratory is Fedov Ignat'evich Vovk. There are two other professionals and a 39 -10 number of assistants. Vovk had accompanied us to the sturgeon hatchery, and next day took us up to the dam to sample the fish there -- something they do regularly. A gill-net about 10 metres long was set on the bottom and hauled in again after 5 minutes. It contained about 20 sevryuga 4 to 6 feet long and 15-30 lb each, 2 osetr of 40-60 lb, and 1 sterlet of 2 lb. These were taken to a floating base and measured, weighed, pectoral fin spine taken for aging, stomachs examined (all empty)9 and gonads weighed. About half were females, all with eggs loose enough for caviar, so they were sifted on the spot to detach them from the ovarian membranes. The caviar and the fish then went to a fish plant downriver. (Commercial fishing is prohibited within 3 km of the dam, but with concentrations of that sort available the temptation must be tremendous.) Another boat had been sampling the smaller fish, and brought in several hundred pounds of mixed chast1k. About half were shad, a lot of white bream (Blicca bjoerkna), zander and chekhon (Pelecus cultratus), and a scattering of true bream, blue bream, "undermouth" (Chondrostoma nasus), chub (Leuciscus cephalus), bersh (Stizostedion volgense), asp (Asoius), ide, perch, rudd and others. Afterward the captain of the fishing boat invited us into the galley for another bowl of fresh caviar. What are the long-term prospects for the various sturgeons and their fisheries? I have talked to both optimists and pessimists. The latter feel that in the long run they'll have to forget about sturgeon and concentrate on smaller, faster-maturing fish. The optimists point to the fact that the stocks haven't collapsed yet, that there is a fair amount of spawning area for sevryuga below Volgograd and even the larger species do some natural spawning there, that the Ural River is apparently being reserved for fish (no dams), and finally that the hatcheries may justify their planners' hopes. If the 50,000,000 fingerlings currently being produced really could contribute 2% of their number to the fishery it would mean a -11- 40
million fish averaging perhaps 25 lb each~ or 25 million lb of top-price product. I have no idea of the economics of the hatchery operations, but the Volgograd plant employes 150 people at the peak of the season. If however the return is much less than say 1%, the picture is less promising. Attempts have been made to determine this return by marking the fingerlings with radioactive phosphorus or calcium, ingested in food or absorbed from the water. These have been detected in the sea during the year of release, but the "biological half-lives'' of the isotopes are not great enough to detect them in the adults. Moving downstream again to Astrakhan and the Volga delta, the semi-anadromous species are also in some trouble. One trouble is that part of the delta lands has already been diked off for rice growing, and this will be extended. Another trouble is that the water regime most favourable to power produc tion does not usually flood the delta lands adequately for spawning and survival of young vobla, etc.; though apparently extra water is now being supplied at the critical time. A third trouble is the present low level of the sea (as compared with the first third of the century), which had reduced the spawning area even before regulation of the river. The sea level has not fallen much since the middle 1940's, which is a good sign considering that most of the reservoirs have been filled during this period, and their expanse must add to the evaporation from the system. However what turn the world's climate will take now is anybody's guess, and as yet no engineering works have been started that might help stabilize the sea level in the event of a return to the conditions that existed up to 400 years ago. One thing going for the vobla is their popularity as a smoked product. Commercial supplies are sporadic outside the delta area, so anyone visiting Astrakhan will plan to bring 50 lb or so back with him on the train or boat, usually 41 -12- in a bag of open net. Those who cannot make the trip ask their friends to mail them a few chalki (1 chalka = 10 vobla on a cord) as often as possible, so that in season this is the biggest item of business in the Astrakhan post office. It would be nice to think that Jason and his sputniki were entertained with beer and voblas and had a few meals of caviar and sturgeon steaks. However they had the golden fleece so much on their minds that, to the best of my recollection, the account of their travels makes no mention of what they had to eat. 42
Discursive Account of a Visit to the Institute for the Biology of Inland Waters at Borok
By W. E. Ricker 43
Discursive account of a visit to the Institute for the Biology of Inland Waters at Borok (near Ryb!nsk, Yaroslavl province)
By W. E. Ricker
In former years anadromous fishes 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 Ryb{nsk, 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 one town and many villages disappeared. The result was a lake-like reservoir about 40X25 miles, with two large bays to the north. On the peninsula between the bays the "Darwin Natural Reservation" was established where hunting and fishing are prohibited: ecological studies are conducted there by the Academy of Sciences, 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 a large estate belonging to a family named Morozov. During the second half of the last cent~ry 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 paper, read voluminously, and wrote critiques and commentaries. 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 44 -2-
contributed original observations in a number of fields -- a sort of latter-day Leonardo. After 1917, Morozov's history as well as his accomplishments 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 Academicians that his ancestral acres would be a good site for studies on reservoirs. The Rybinsk reservoir was only the first of a series projected for the Volga, and the same treat ment was being planned for other large rivers. Ther~ was eventually to be a very large total area of ponded water, so the Academy concluded that there was need for Iesearch 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 Institute for Reservoir Biology. In 1952 the laboratory build ing 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. Its address is Borok, Nekouz Region, Yaroslavl Province, USSR. The Director of the Institute was and is I. D. Papanin of North Pole fame. Apart from Morozov's home, 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 used its boiler as the basis for a central heating plant. (New boilers were being installed at the time of our 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. 45 -3-
I visited Borok July 18-25, 1969, accompanied by Aleksandr Vas!l'evich Zasosov of VNIRO. By this time there were 5 main research buildings of 3 or 4 stories (each referred to as a "corpus"), and a separate Geophysical Institute. Another building, under construction near the water, will contain mainly tanks and pools for study of fish behaviour and experi mental 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 are near the boat-basin, and there is a small laboratory building at the experimental ponds. The Institute also has a branch near Kuibyshev at the town of Tol'yatti, where currently the Fiat Company is constructing an automobile works. Rybinsk reservoir is situated in a central position among the network of inland waterways of European Russia. Going south and downstream you eventually reach the Caspian Sea, after traversing 4 additional reservoirs (one more is under construction). Below the lowest reservoir, 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 Azov. 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 Onega-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 take Beloe, go over to the Dvina drainage and take the longer river route that ends at Arkhangelsk. And there are also accessible reservoirs over toward the Ural mountains, on the largest Volga tributary, the Kama. 46 -4-
Operating on this sytem the Institute has two research vessels about 110 feet long but rather narrow in the beam, 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 smaller boat basin as well, used also for swimming. At the time of our visit their newest vessel, the Akademik Topchiev, was operating in the Volga River and estuary leading to the main reservoir. The cruise was in the charge of ~· Shentyakova; the 5 or 6 scientists and laboratory technicians on board were all women; the ship's crew and trawlmaster 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 Dm!tri, the Tsarevich, lived there and eventually die there. (There are two versions of how this happened: either he acci dentally 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 like 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 hydrofoil "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 types on fish of various 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 (~. ballerus) were the principal species caught, these being the abundant large benthophage and planktophage, respectively, of the reservoir. Other species taken in small numbers were pike, zanders (Stizostedion lucioperca), bersh (§. volgensis), burbot, perch, 47 -5- chekhon (Pelecus cultratus), white bream (Blicca bjoerkna) ana 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 erythrophthalrnus) and small pike. Most of these were left for the black-headed and mew gulls that quickly discovered what was going on; a black kite carne 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. Shtegrnan 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 reservoir the higher water level and wave action have accelerated the erosion of these bluffs, and several villages that survived the flooding are going to have to move back gradually until a 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. Rachinsky, an old friend and class mate of Dr. Zasosov's, who is respondible 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 48 -6-
Italy. His work has been closely associated with that of N. A. Gordeev and L. K. Ilfna. 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 reservoirs some carp; (3) a later increase of 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 49 -7- the "commercial stock" in the area enclosed. The lower limit of length in such a stock is rather vague, being defined partly 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 ~dded, but Gordeev feels that the rate of fishing could be doubled, approximately, with benefit to the total utilization of the reservoir's blue bream production. This method is less successful 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 i~portant, 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 require ments of the local fish, but without much success so far. They have, however, consented to regulate the flow of the lower Volga in spring so there is enough high water in the delta area for spawning and early feeding of the important vobla (a large roach) stock 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 50 -8-
herring strips that used to be available in wooden boxes before the aftermath of prohibition made public 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 pelagic, 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 deeper water. They are a commercial fish hereabouts, though not among the·most favoured. V. A. Shentyakov was ill in 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, 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, another 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 tyulka (Clupeonella) have come in from the south; Kuibyshev reservoir, near the middle, has some of both. In Rybinsk reservoir stint are the principal food of the zander, and farther south Clupeonella provide the same service. Neither is a commercial fish in -9- 51 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 keep them alive. Additional foods introduced into the more southern 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. The pond site at present has about 5 hectares of water in all, and additional ponds are contemplated. They seek to reproduce reservoir conditions as regards water level, cropping, etc., in order to check causal relationships, and eventually to test possible modifications of observed physical or biological situations. The Laboratory of Phytoplankton and Phytobenthos is headed by K. A. Guseva. I had a short chat with her, and a longer one with A. L. PYrina. The latter says the primary production by phytoplankton in Rybinsk reservoir averages 0.5-1.0 gram carbon/m2/day, in different years, during a growing season of 180 days, 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/ha/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, -10- 52 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 in the northern Ural region has been begun recently, but no results are available as yet. The Laboratory of Zooplankton and Zoobenthos is led by A. v. Monakov. Monakov is a rather 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 ~o overemphasize how great an obstacle our archaic spelling is to easy international communication. Given sensible orthography, most scientists everywhere 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 sphaeriids, 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 1-3 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 of progressive "oligotrophication'' 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 Boltovsky (who does speak English). After some years at Borok -11- 53 he went to Leningrad University, 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 (apparently) 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 describing Canadian reservoirs, comparable to Thomas and Harbeck's "Reservoirs in the United States" (U.S. Geol. Survey, Water Supply Paper No. 1360A, 1956). Again, if such a publica tion already exists I and he would be glad to hear about it. Another of this versatile limnologist's interests is in fermenting 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 vintage 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. 54 -12-
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 Borok operations include the Laboratory of Ecology of Lower Organisms, the Laboratory of Microbiology (especially of sediments), the Laboratory of Physioloqy 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 of Zoology (head, A. Vainshtein) includes a few entomologists and vertebrate zoologists. One of these is Dr. B. Shtegman, 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 have scientific 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 category
Zaveduyushchii laboratorii Head of the 1 laboratory Starshii nauchnyi sotrudnik Senior scientist 1 Mladshii nauchnyi sotrudnik Junior scientist 7 Starshii laborant Senior laboratory 2 worker Laborant Laboratory worker 2 Preparator Technician 5 55 -13-
Four of the seven "junior" 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 or other specialized training, and from starshii laborant onward the incumbents have their own specialties and conduct independ ent investigations, at least in part. The preparators may or may not have specialized training. From its early years the Institute has had its own publication, now called (after two changes of title) Trudy Instituta Biologii Vnutrennykh Vod SSSR. There is also an Informatsionnyi Byulleten for short papers or preliminary 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 journals; particularly Voprosy Ikhtiologii, Voprosy Ekologii, Doklady Akademii Nauk, Zoologicheskii Zhurnal and Gidrobiologicheskii Zhurnal, as well as special monographs.
In 1966 the First Conference concerning In~estigations of Bodies of Water in the Volga Basin was held at Tolyatti, 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. 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. Borok was the place from which came the largest number of contributions to the Conference (28), while its branch at To1yatti had an additional 18. The various branches of GosNIORKh (State Research Institute for Lake and River Fisheries) had 33 contributors in all. -14- 56
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 a tourist centre near Listvenichnoe on Lake Baikal. Seven of these were by members of the Borck staff. There are complete sets of the Trudy of the Borck Institute in the Nanaimo and Winnipeg libraries, and some other FRB libraries have at least partial sets. 57
Summary Account of a Visit to Kiev
By W. E. Ricker 58
Summary Account of a Visit to Kiev
By W. E. Ricker
Kiev was the first capital of Russia, or Rus as it was then called, and it flourished for a couple of centuries about 1000-1100 AD, shortly after the eastern Slavs were Christianized and united. However, subsequently Rus was over run by Mongols and by Tartars who exacted tribute each year; the state became divided and different parts were ruled at various times by Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, Turkey, and so on. To-day the only remains of the old city that I happened on are the ruins of the "Golden" gate through the town wall built by Yaroslav the Wise, and part of the mosaics in the cathedral of St. Sophia, done in the gloomy Byzantine style. The modern city is pleasant, full of trees (with possibly some overemphasis on horse-chestnuts), has numerous parks, two botanical gardens, a broadened main street (Krestyatik) lined by new buildings (old ones destroyed during the war), a subway, a fair supply of onion-dome churches dating from older times, and numerous apartment blocks whose balconies are draped with scarlet runners, ivy and Virginia creeper. It occupies a series of knolls on the bank of the Dnepr River. To the east is the forest-steppe, while to the west there was originally solid forest. The soil is light sandy loess, so the trees along the river are mainly pines, with some aspen, birch, oak and so on. I visited two research institutes in Kiev August 11-16, 1969, accompanied by Mikhail Fedorovich Svetlov of VNIRO. 59 -2-
Ukrainian Fisheries Research Institute (UkrNIIRKh)
This Institute is at the eastern edge of the city, on the shore of a small artificial lake and adjacent to a pine woods park area. Below the lake is a series of ponds used for experimental work, extending 6 km down the valley and with a total area of.600 hectares. The Institute moved to this site not too long ago, and only two of the projected buildings are complete as yet. These are 4-storey brick, each a little smaller than the old laboratory building at Nanaimo. Two additional buildings of about the same size are well along: one is a lecture and class-room building, and the other a hotel or dormitory -- primarily for students who come there for their "praktikum" (field work required for a degree in ichthyology). Director of the Institute is Vasilly Aleksandrovich Murin, an energetic individual of 69, who apparently was the sparkplug behind the move out of the city. His field is economics and organization of fisheries. The Institute has two Divisions, each with a number of Labbratories. The Pond Fisheries division includes the following laboratories, headed by the individuals shown: Selection and Genetics: A. Khuzeta. Natural Food Base: G. I. Shpet (I believe Shpet is also the head of the Division). Artificial Foods: V. S. Prosyany, whose moustaches resemble those of Taras Bulba (a character in Gogol) according to Professor Murin; or those of Taras Shevchenko (a Ukrainian poet of the last century) according to my own check of the statues around town. Diseases: Professor A. K. Shcherbina. Acclimatization: Nosar. Economics: V. A. Murin. -3- 60
Rearing pond-fish is big business in the Ukraine. There are about 50,000 hectares of ponds in the system of state pond fisheries, producing about 700 kg/ha. The latter figure has risen steadily from about 350 kg/ha ten years ago because of more intensive culture -- mainly more feeding with artificial foods. There are also about 100,000 ha of kolkhoz ponds but their average production is far less. The fisheries administra tion is encouraged to increase its pond hectarage, but good sites have become scarce. There are the usual problems of water supply, construction methods, disease, parasites, trash fish, etc., and the Institute experiments and assists with these. Carp are the main product. They are reared in a 2-year cycle, and standard market size is 450 g (1 lb). Some use is made of the "Chinese'' carps. As adults these are hardy, but reproduction is much trickier: sustained warm temperatures (25-30° C) are needed, followed by pituitary injections. Material for the latter is obtained from the ordinary carp when they are harvested. There are five hatcheries for Chinese carps in the Ukraine, three of them near power stations where warm water is available. Of the Chinese carps, the grass carp (white Amur) tastes best, according to Shpet; this is the species that consumes larger aquatic plants. The silver carp or tolstolobik, which eats phytoplankton, is not so tasty. I didn't get a report on the bighead (spotted tolstolobik) which is also reared in small numbers. Grass carp can be used to control weeds in a pond, and they are said to have cleared out the Kara-kum canal (in Turkmenia near the Persian border) which was so choked with weeds that the water would hardly flow. Parts of the Rideau system might benefit from such treat ment, and there would be no danger of this fish going wild in Canada, because of the high temperature requirement for reproduction. The Natural Waters division [Otdel Estestvennykh Vodoemov] is heavily concerned with reservoirs, of which there 61 -4- are four large ones on the Dnepr. Three of these have an individual 11 Laboratory" concerned with their special problems. A fifth reservoir is under construction, and a sixth projected, which will just about fill the river. The total staff of the division engaged directly in research work is 36, of which 18 are scientists. Head of the division is Nikolai Evgen'evich Sal'nikov. He was a student of Professor Soldatov of Amur River salmon fame; he says that Soldatov's mother was a Canadian Indian. Sal'nikov was in Cuba a few years back and contributed to the volumes on fishery investigations in that area. The laboratories and their leaders are as follows, as far as I obtained readable notes. (It is a remarkable fact that nobody seems to have down on paper the structure of his institute, nor any list of employees. I wonder what they do on payday?) 1. Kakhov Reservoir: Probatov. 2. Kremenchug Reservoir: 3. Kiev Reservoir: N. A. Konstantlnova. 4. Production of Fish Stocks: N. E. Sal'nikov (Deputy: Konovalov). 5. Fishing Gear and Techniques: L. I. Denlsov. 6. Fishery Organization and Economics: V. A. Kononov. The Dnepr reservoirs are much more productive than those on the Volga. Kakhov reservoir, the lowest one, yields about 45 kg/ha from an area of 260,000 ha. The same stretch of river, before flooding, yielded only 7 kg per hectare of its then surface. Big changes in species composition of the yield have occurred, the present dominant species (zanders, bream) being valuable ones. Carp have declined steadily, however, in spite of increasing liberations of young from a hatchery (up to 24 million of 10 g each). This has led to work on the relative hardiness of wild and pond-reared fingerlings (they're worse) and their survival in the reservoir to commercial size. The latter is done using water-soluble non-aniline dyes injected 62 -5- under the skin of the belly, which remain recognizable up to 3 years at least (this surprised me). The Rubezhanskii Kombinat ·producei these, with code numbers as follows:
Orange: 2PC Green: 26~ Bright blue: PC Bright red: 5CX Ten grams of dye are dissolved in 250 g distilled water, and about 5000 fish a day can be marked by an experienced operator. (High School students are often employed.) However, large-scale experiments were begun only last year. Much smaller numbers of grass carp have been released over the years (up to 2,000,000 a year), and these have appeared in the catches in fair numbers. Pike are also raised and released at about 5 g. They are fed on perch eggs and fry, and the yield is 640,000 per hectare of pond. The pike culture expert is Tat'yana Vas!levna Lugovaya. As in the lower Volga reservoirs, a species of Clupeonella, here called tyulka, has appeared on the scene. It was originally anadromous into the lower Dnepr. Some got trapped when Kakhov reservoir was formed; they adapted to the freshwater environment and have become abundant. They are fished commercially there to some extent, and are the main food of the zander. They have also appeared spontaneously in the higher reservoirs, no one is sure quite how. An interesting development is that some species have changed their habits to adapt to life in a reservoir. For example, pike now spawn in water up to a metre deep among stems of Phragmites (formerly only in much shallower places), and their spawning period has been lengthened. The problem of natural mortality among reservoir fishes is the special concern of Z. I. Vyachanina, who also speaks good English and has spent a couple of years in Ghana. -6- 63
Natural lakes are found in northwestern Ukraine and also along the lower course of the Danube. The latter are now cut off from the river by dams, and hatcheries are being constructed to supply them with young fish. The fishing gear and techniques laboratory is experimenting with midwater trawling, especially night trawling. The idea is to develop fishing techniques selective for each species, so that all can be used at an optimum level. Another objective is to get estimates, for different species, of the "vertical" catching efficiency of a bottom trawl: the ratio of the catch to the number of fish present in the total water column. Their midwater trawl is 15 metres on the cork line, towed at 4.5 knots. Most reservoir fish ascend into the top 2 metres at night. A widely-employed procedure, new to me, is hanging nets so the openings are square when fishing instead of diamond shaped. This is done for trawls, fyke nets, and gill nets, and in all cases gives better results according to Denisov. For gill-nets the sides of the squares are in the horizontal and vertical planes when set, and efficiency is improved if nets are hung quite loose. This may be accomplished by rigging lines at intervals between the cork and lead line to take the strain, and with the web tied to them in two places so it won't all slump to the bottom. Alternatively the net can be hung as a sort of 2-wall trammel net, with the large "mesh" about 1 metre to a side. -7- 64
Institute of Hydrobiology of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences
This Institute engages in all kinds of work in aquatic biology, but with special emphasis on "sanitary" work: sewage, purification, water supplies, etc. The Director is A. V. Topachevsky, the Deputy Director V. N. Zhukinsky. Head quarters are in Kiev near the former Golden Gate, but much of the research is done at several field stations. The Institute's work is divided among a number of Divisions and a few Laboratories, the latter being a kind of second-grade division, rather than a component of one of the major divisions as at UKrNIIRKh. The Divisions, Laboratories, and their leaders are as follows: 1. Division of General Hydrobiology: Ya. Ya. Tsep.
2. II " Sanitation: A. V. Topachevsky.
3. II II Water Microbiology: D. Z. Gak (~). 4. " " Algal Physiology: L.A. Syrenko (~). 5. " " Hydrochemistry: A. I. Den1sova. 6. " II Hydrology: N. V. Pikush. 7. II II Ichthyology: V. I. Vlad1mirov.
8. II II Physiology and Biochemistry of Aquatic Invertebrates: A. Ya. Molarevskaya. 9. Laboratory of Fish Feeding and Food; G. L. Melnichuk.
10. II 11 Fish Fertilization: V. N. Zhuk1nsky.
11. II " Water Toxicology: L. P. Brag1nsky. -8- 65
There are four main field stations, the more distant ones being called Branches (Filiali);
Lyutysh Experimental Base, by the Kiev reservoir. Kherson Branch, near the mouth of the Dnepr: v. F. Grigorev, in charge. Tasmin Branch, on Kremenchug reservoir. Vilkov Branch, on the Danube. Aleksandreeva Branch, at Belaya Tserkov, about 75 km SW of Kiev.
In all there are 400 or more employees, including 120 scientists. Most of these people were away working or on holiday, but I had a long talk with Vladimirov, who has made various studies on the fishes of the lower reaches of the Dnepr and its reservoirs. His Division of Ichthyology is one of the larger ones, with 18 scientists and 38 people in all. Dr. Zhukinsky arranged a visit to the Lyutysh site, an hour's drive from Kiev. About 6 small laboratory buildings have been built in a pine woods well back from the reservoir~ because the bank is still eroding and is not expected to be stabilized until about 200 metres of land has been washed into the lake. (To me this seems optimistic.) The whole area is full of foxholes left over from the 1940's, and a few old grenades were lying around. We had a tour on the reservoir for about an hour: the banks have the steep profile character istic of loess, and are eroding rapidly. The shores mostly are in pine woods, which shelter a fair supply of campers' tents; on the lake there are a few sail boats, bathing beauties, gulls (including the graceful "little'' gulls), and so on. Two large concrete bunkers. have been completely washed out and around, and are left sitting isolated in the reservoir. 66 -9-
Kiev reservoir is the most distinctive or unusual one of the Dnepr cascade. Its water is yellow-brown, draining from the extensive Pripet marshes to the northwest. It is shallow and subject to a severe drawdown in winter, so that oxygen is often depleted and winter-kills occur. In summer its high organic content can produce a bloom of blue-greens that pile up on lee shores, producing odours and a nocturnal drain on the oxygen supply. However at the time of our visit the water was quite clear, though coloured, probably because of the cool summer. Pike are an important species in the reservoir, since the numerous tributaries offer extensive spawning facilities; however the total fish yield per hectare is the least of the Dnepr series. None of this discourages the sport fishermen, who apparently emigrate from Kiev and dot the ice of the reservoir in winter, protected by sheepskin coats and a supply of vodochka (or perhaps the Ukrainian gorllka which is flavoured with red peppers). Some of the Institute's scientists were busy at work at the Lyutysh base, among them:
E. P. Nakhshina -- studying effects of trace elements on fish. Gyulsinea Abdulkhakovna Zhdanova -- biology of micro crustaceans from the production viewpoint. Olga Sergeeva -- effects of warm water and toxic compounds on plankton organisms. B. M. Chernisheva -- effects of small quantities of poisonous substances on fishes (guppies) and on their progeny. B. P. Zaets -- relation of skin structure to rate of swimming in fishes. -10- 67
I. A. Radzymovsky -- effects of humus compounds on algae (especially bluegreens). Yu. F. Krasavtsev (cytogeneticist) and S. Ya. Bel'cheva (biophysicist) -- both tooling up to attack the fertilization problem under Zhukinsky's guidance, using taran (semi-anadromous roach) as the experi mental animal.
A set of experimental ponds is scheduled for construction in 1970, though if I were doing it I'd put them not in front of the buildings but behind them (farther away from the reservoir), to give them a longer life expectancy. The ichthyology division apparently does a lot of its work at the Belaya Tserkov (White Church) base where there are extensive pond facilities. The effects of quality of spawners on percentage fertilization, hatch, and survival of fry has had a lot of attention, and the effects are quite large. Zhukinsky, who used to work with this group, found that the age of the parents was important (among taran); both maternally and paternally fish of intermediate age produced the most viable offspring. Fatness, temperature, pH, oxygen, trace elements (especially zinc) and other factors also produce detectable effects. The limnological divisions are of course much concerned with eutrophication, algal blooms, water purification, etc. The Institute publishes Trudy, of which there are 30 or more issues, and the Gidrobiologicheskii Zhurnal. The latter began in 1965. It is a general journal for marine as well as freshwater investigations, with an editorial board drawn from across the Union. Unfortunately time does not permit a more complete description of Ukrainian freshwater fishery and limnological work, or of Kiev and its surroundings. The research is mostly published, or will be; and I don't really want to write a -11- 68 guidebook. But if you are considering a holiday in that general region, don't miss it -- particularly if you speak some Ukrainian or Russian. For the historian, architect and archaeologist there are old and not-so-old churches and monasteries (including a panorama showing Pushkin, Tolstoy, etc., descending into the flames of hell), caves with mummified worthies in wall niches, the grave of Yuri Dolgoruki the founder of Moscow, and so on. For the naturalist there are storks by the fish ponds and their nests in the villages, an excellent museum of zoology and geology, landscape ensembles in the botanical garden ranging from desert to the Carpathian mountain flora, and much more. Among the people there is much interest in the Canadian Ukrainians as well as in Doukhobors, Indians, Eskimos and life in general across the sea, and a very friendly attitude toward visitors. 69
Visit to the State Research Institute for Lake and River Fisheries, Leningrad
By W. E. Ricker 70
Visit to the State Research Institute for Lake and River Fisheries, Leningrad
By W. E. Ricker
Like most Soviet institutions, the Gosudarstvennyi Nauchno-issledovatel'skii Institut Ozernogo i Rechnogo Rybnogo Khozyaistva, GosNIORKh for short, has had a moderately complex developmental history. Its origin was in the pre revolutionary Ministry of Agriculture, and this Ministry or Komissariat retained control of it into the 1930's. Since its present se~ies of publications began in 1929, it has been known successively as the Institute for fish and fishery investigations, Leningrad Division; Leningrad ichthyological research institute; the Institute for applied ichthyology and scientific fishery investigations; and the Federal research Institute for lake and river fisheries (VNIORKh). The latest change occurred about 1960, the substitution of "Gosudarstvennyi" for "Vsesoyuznyi" reflecting the fact that the Russian Republic instead of the Union government was assuming responsibility for it. For many years the Director was L. S. Berg, and the Director's office still contains elaborate carved chairs, bookcases, mantel, etc., presented to him on some anniversary. In 1969 the Institute moved to new quarters on the south side of the Neva, its address now being: Naberezhnaya Makarova, 26, Leningrad V-53 . I visited GosNIORKh August 22-26, accompanied by A. D. Druzh!nin of VNIRO. The present Director is L. A. Kudersky, a rather young man, at once affable and energetic. He has worked on the fish stocks of Karelian lakes, also the benthos of the White Sea. The Deputy Director is L. A. Petrenko, whose interests are with salmon and anadromous fishes generally. 71 -2-
The Institute has 6 regional branches in addition to its central organization: these are at Volgograd, Saratov, Kazan, Konakov, Pskov and Petrozavodsk. Formerly there were more, but 7 branches situated east of the Urals have been separated off to form the Siberian Fishery Research Institute (SibNIIRKh), grouped around a central station at Tumen' (Director, A. N. Petkevich). The two groups are responsible for most of the applied research on Soviet fresh waters. These waters yield about 20,000 tons a year of commercial products (exclusive of pond fish), plus a large sport catch. The work of GosNIORKh is divided among 15 laboratories, shown below. It has about 15 vessels of 90-150 HP, rigged for trawling, gill-netting and general work; also numerous smaller craft. There is a pond experimental center at Ropsha 60 km from Leningrad, and other experimental sites at Alol (Pskov region) and Pustoshka (L. Ilmen region). The scientific and laboratory staff in Leningrad numbers about 300, including 10 with the title of Professor or Doctor, and 60 Kandidats (similar to PhDs). The other centers have about 200 additional. The total payroll is 840, including boat crews.
1 . Laboratory of reservoirs and rivers Head: P. L. Pirozhnikov Dr. Pirozhnikov's group and all the regional labor atories on the Volga do work concerned with fishery management in rivers and their impoundments. They leave Rybinsk reservoir largely to the Bor6k people, but operate on all the others.
2. Laboratory of lake fisheries Head: ' v.. v. Pokrovsky ' 3. Laboratory of experimental ichthyology and piscicides Head: E. V. Burmakhin 72 -3-
The work of these two laboratories seems closely related. GosNIORKh has a set of 200 or so experimental lakes in an area 40 x 40 km, about 75 km from Petrozavodsk (Karelia). Either complete or partial poisoning is one tool that can be used on small lakes. The most favored species for intensive culture is Coregonus peled, a cisco with broad ecological tolerance, but some work has been done with rainbow trout. In either case stocking is with yearlings in the spring, and harvest is the same fall. From the monoculture lakes (either poisoned or naturally barren of fish) they typically get 100 kg/ha per year, or twice this with special treatment (fertilization, sometimes also lime). Smaller lakes are used to rear stocking material for larger ones. Eggs of peled are first hatched in ordinary whitefish jars. G. P. Rudenko stated that there are 60 million or more hectares of small shallow (up to 3 m) lakes in the USSR, and feels that eventually most will be managed intensively in one way or another. At 100 kg/ha their potential works out to 6 million tons, or approximately the world's total commercial catch of freshwater fish at the present time. To date about 10,000 hectares are under management in the Leningrad area, and 40,000 in the whole union; this is 0.07% of the estimated total. However, like our Freshwater Institute at Winnipeg, they are evidently "thinking big''· Another approach is to use selective fishing, fertilization, and stocking in various combinations to achieve a better ecological balance. For example, the Chinese carps are being tried from this point of view: grass carp to reduce vegetation where it is excessive, silver carp to consume phytoplankton in ''blooming" lakes. These two species are evidently hardy in Karelia, though they do not spawn north of southern Ukraine. In the long run they hope this ''ecological" approach will prove superior to periodic poisoning, and of course the latter is not feasible in larger lakes. 73 -4-
P~ A. Dry~gin, now in his 70's or better, is attached to the lake group. He has had a life-long interest in patterns of maturation in fishes, and takes issue with the Moscow school on the origin of the once-a-year type of reproduction (as compared with "batch" spawning or continuous spawning). Also has worked on whitefish systematics, and various other fishes.
4. Laboratory of fish culture Head: G. A. Golovkov Mr. Golovkov is interested in acclimatizing various whitefishes in new lakes. He hopes to get the catch of peled up to 10,500 tons in 5 years' time.
5. Laboratory of fish genetics and selection Head: V. S. Kirip!chnikov The work is mainly with carp and trout, but some work with Chinese carps is under way, aiming at a lower temperature threshold for reproduction.
6. Laboratory of methods of pond production Head: A. S. Zonova This group is concerned with improving pond produc tion of carp, mainly, and carries on experiments at the various pond sites.
7. Laboratory of sturgeon culture Head: F. I. Vovk I met Mr. Vovk at Volgograd, which is his headquarters.
8. Laboratory of hydrobiology Head: Ts. I. Ioffe This laboratory is active in transplanting inverte brates to new reservoirs on the Volga and elsewhere. Some of the Baikal gammarids are being tried. 74 -5-
9. Laboratory of hydrology and hydrochemistry Head: I. V. Baranov
10. Laboratory for the study of water pollution ·Head: A. G. GJsev
11. Laboratory of fish diseases Head: Yu. A. Strelkov Dropsy, air bladder and gill diseases of carp are still under study; also salmonid diseases; also the ecology of parasites.
12. Laboratory of fish physiology Head: I. N. Ostroumova S. V. Streltsova described the work of this labora tory, which includes effects of different diets and rations on physiological processes, effects of using thermal waters in rearing fish, transportation problems, etc.
13. Laboratory of economic investigations Head: A. A. Kalnibolotsky The work comes under three headings: (a) Economics of the inland fishing industry, organization of kolkhozes, etc. (b) Organization of scientific work supporting fisheries. (c) Forecasts of catches in the larger bodies of fresh water.
14. Laboratory of fish protection devices and electrofishing Head: L. M. Nusenbaum Fishways, electrical screens (at power plants, etc.), and fishing devices occupy this group. According to M. P. Maizelis, electrical trawls are considered to be very effective, 75 -6- and are now in use on three reservoirs. They catch about twice as much as an ordinary trawl and the fish are larger. Tests by Shentyakov (Borok) and others on their possible effects on the fish that escape are continuing, but nothing has been identified so far. Five or 6 other types of electrical commercial fishing devices are in use in the USSR, about 300 units in all at the moment. The "Pelikan" type herder runs from batteries; it uses a pulsed wave of special shape, similar to what the electric eel uses, which apparently is of near maximum efficiency. V. V. Gulin of this laboratory has recently become interested in the fish stocks. He has been working on Lake Ilmen with 2 trawlers, trying to get better vital statistics of the fish populations, especially natural mortality rate, in order to establish a biological basis for fishing regulations. His work suggests that natural mortality of bream is about 60% at ages 2 and 3, falls to 25% during ages 4-6, and increases again to 60% among older fish.
15. Laboratory of fishing gear, techniques and strategy Head: A. I. Zonov The "total catch method" of fishing small lakes is being tried out: you fish as hard as possible for a brief period, then let it rest a year or more.
GosNIORKh has its own publication, Izvestiya GosNIORKha, now at volume 68. Most of the branch laboratories have a local series; these have appeared sporadically and run to a few volumes (from 1 to 10 each, 35 in all). There are fairly good sets of the central publication at Nanaimo and Winnipeg, and a partial set of the Karelian branch's publication at Nanaimo. 76 -7-
I did not visit any of the Academy institutes in Leningrad, nor yet the University: I had planned to return for a second visit, later cancelled for lack of time. Leningrad's attractions are too well known to need description here, but their metro incorporates two (to me) novel ideas: (1) at the busier stations they have doors on the platform as well as on the cars, so people can't get pushed onto the tracks; (2) where two lines cross, the trains of the different lines are brought to opposite sides of the same platform, so people transferring in the most frequent directions don't have to take a tunnel and-escalator trip. 77
A Trip to Murmansk
By W. E. Ricker 78
A Trip to Murmansk
By W. E. Ricker
Born in 1862, Nikolai Mikhailovich Knip6vich was the son of a Russian official stationed in Helsinki. Attracted by the exciting discoveries concerning aquatic life made during the last quarter of the 19th century, he studied biology and worked for a time in the Petersburg museum. But he was attracted by the idea of relating the occurrence of fish stocks to physical and biological oceanographic conditions. He raised money by public subscription and from the government for a northern expedition, and the Andrei Pervozvannyi was constructed for the job -- the first ship to be designed specially for oceanographic and fishery research. The expedition began in 1899 and continued to 1906. Its trawls discovered that stocks of cod, plaice and haddock were widespread in the Barents Sea, where up to that time only trap and line fisheries had been prosecuted, mainly close to the coast. In 1906 a map of the distribution of commercial fishes was published. Some Russian commercial trawling began, but on a very small scale; it was not until some years after World War I, when the railway to Murmansk began to operate on a regular schedule, that it became possible to bring uncured fish to large centers of population. Meantime, from 1908 onward trawlers from Britain, Norway and other countries had reached Cape Kanin and were fishing the Barents Sea actively. After his successful Barents exploration, Knipovich headed several expeditions to the "southern seas":. Azov, Black, Caspian, and Aral, the last being in the early 1930's. A few.enthusiasts worked sporadically in the north, including K. M. Deryugin, s. v. Averintsev and G. A. Klyuge. In 1921 the State Oceanographic Institute (GOIN) was given the task of studying the raw material base for the projected expansion of northern fisheries; this was directed first by M. P. S6mov, 79 -2- later by I. I. Mesyatsev. Its work was mainly with groundfish, using an old icebreaker the first year, later the steamer Persei: the stars of the constellation Perseus are still used as the PINRO emblem. In 1928 a Northern Herring Expedition was organized. In 1933 the Murmansk Division of GOIN and the Herring Expedition amalgamated to form the Arctic Research Institute for Marine Fisheries and Oceanography (PINRO), which has maintained its individuality ever since. Two other changes of name occurred, however: during the 1940's Professor Knipovich was honoured by having the Institute named after him, and since the war the word "proektnyi" was added, presumably to suggest a forward outlook in planning fishing operations and inventing new methods and apparatus. The title can now be translated as the N. M. Knipovich Arctic Research and Planning Institute for Marine Fisheries and Oceanography: Polyarnyi Nauchno issledovatelskii i Proektnyi Institut Morskogo Rybnogo Khozyaistva i Okeanografii 1meni N. M. Knipovicha. Its address is: 6, Knipovich St. Murmansk
During the 1930's groundfish work of the Institute was under the leadership of Nikolai Antonovich Maslov; he became scientific director after the war, and was a USSR delegate to meetings of ICES until illness forced his retire ment. Another well-known northern figure is Yu. Yu. Marti, now with the Institute of Oceanology in Moscow. PINRO's first work beyond the limits of the Barents and White Seas was in 1936-37. Since 1946 it has spread across the north Atlantic and south to waters off Florida, followed closely by the commercial fleet. The Atlanta-Scandinavian and Icelandic herring stocks, Newfoundland cod and redfish, the Georges Bank herring and the New England silver hake have been among the most abundant stocks exploited, and in the 80 -3- last three cases they seem to have fished up the accumulated stock of old fish before local fishermen had started to go after them in a big way. Canadian explorations for stocks of redfish and other species were likely of assistance in this expansion, but were hardly a decisive factor, just as the British did not need Knipovich's results to begin their industry in the Barents Sea. I visited PINRO September 4-9, accompanied by Tamara Agapova of VNIRO. The present Director is A. P. Alekseev, and Deputy Director Konstant1n Andreevich Lyamin. Their work is divided between biological studies of fish stocks, including production, catch forecasts, exploration and scouting, etc., and the invention or improvement of techniques of fishing and of processing. There is a branch in Arkhangelsk (SevPINRO) that works on the White and Kara Seas and specializes in seaweeds. The total staff is about 600, of which 35% have university-level degrees, including 26 people with the Kandidat degree. I was told that there have been complaints that they do not have some more senior people, a few doctors or professors for example. Their answer is that such people tend to get moved south; in fact, from Knipovich onward PINRO has been a training ground for specialists that migrate to other parts of the country. The list below of laboratories and divisions was given to me by Mr. Lyamin. The total of 86 staff members mentioned does not include laborants.
1 • Laboratory of bottom fishes of the Barents Sea V. P. Ponomarenko (leader) and 4 other scientists are listed, but Mr. Ponomarenko puts his complete staff at 32, including 16 scientists and support staff with scientific training. They use 3 ships steadily: two trawlers of 600 tons and one tuna-type vessel of 1200 tons. They make 3 cruises a year for egg and larval surveys, also trawl hauls with nets of various sizes. Market samples for length, age, 81
-4- etc., are taken regularly, and tagging experiments made. All this plus catch per unit effort and hydrological data are all fed into the forecasting panel. With the decrease in average age of most species, the question of egg quality as related to of spawners size~is becoming a worry. They asked if our St. John's or St. Andrews Stations are investigating this. For cod a positive relation has been established between year-class strength and individual size as fingerlings and yearlings.
2. Laboratory of bottom fishes of the NW Atlantic K. G. Konstantinov plus 3 scientists on the list. Mr. Konstantinov and his colleagues were all out at sea at the time of my visit.
3. Laboratory of pelagic fishes Yu. K. Benko plus 3 scientists.
4. Laboratory of fish physiology V. P. Sorokin plus 6 scientists. This laboratory has three main areas of research: (a) the process of reproduction, sexual cycle, effects of age, etc. (so far no age effects have been confirmed); (b) effects of radioactive substances (Sr90, etc.) on reproduction, using salmon as the object (Ura River run) -- chromosome dislocations, sexual cycle, gonad development, etc.; (c) intraspecific differentiation in herring and white fishes as shown by serology and immunology.
5. Laboratory of production and acclimatization of marine animals S. S. Surkov plus 2 scientists. 82 -5-
6. Inland waters laboratory B. I. Shuster plus 2 scientists.
7. Salmon laboratory M. A. Yakovenko plus 2 scientists. This group is involved with the introductions of Pacific salmon, as well as in research to increase stocks of native salmon.
8. Laboratory of marine biology T. K. Sysoeva plus 4 scientists.
9. Laboratory of marine geology B. N. Kotenev plus 4 scientists.
10. Laboratory of marine hydrology
I M. M. Adrov plus 4 scientists
11. Laboratory of chemistry of the sea v. s. Zlobin plus 3 scientists. This laboratory attacks the general problem of the conversion of inorganic matter to organic. Mr. Zlobin feels that radiocarbon estimates of photosynthesis need to be supplemented by knowledge of the distribution and cycling of biogenic elements, especially phosphates; in some areas oxygen distribution is also useful. He thinks that they are close to being able to forecast primary production several months in advance. Processes in Davis Strait resemble those in the Norwegian Sea, but with different timing of maxima and minima. Zlobin also says he has a formula to describe the mosaic distribution of phosphates found by Parsons in the Gulf of Alaska and Strickland in the Peruvian current, based on negative electric charge. Another question of active interest is the food value of phytoplankters, their specific amino acids, nucleic acids, etc. Radiocarbon is used to trace these substances. A book on the subject is under way. 83 -6-
12. Laboratory of technological investigations
L. P. M~nder plus 7 scientists plus 1 engineer.
13. Laboratory of commercial fishing techniques P. A. Starovoitov plus 2 engineers.
14. Laboratory of techniques of underwater investigations 0. N. Kiselev plus 1 scientist plus 2 engineers. This laboratory pioneered the use of a submarine for underwater observations, and now has various types of undersea craft and observation stations.
There are also 5 divisions or sections (otdely) of PINRO, as follows:
1 • Construction division for fishery apparatus V. P. Lukin plus 2 constructors.
2. Construction division for electronics N. M. Zhogov plus 7 engineers and constructors.
3. Construction division for fish-finding apparatus v. D. Tesler plus 1 constructor
4. Division of economic investigations L. S. Nikolsky plus 2 scientists.
5. Division of mathematical methods and electronic computers L. A. Ostrovskaya plus 2 scientists plus 3 engineers. This division was founded in 1965. Part of its work is with the industry, in computing strategy and distribution of the fishing fleets. They also aim at developing catch prediction equations that will more or less automate the forecasting business -- adding new information as it becomes available, of course. They have two small computers in the Institute 84
-7-
("EUVM" and "Mir"), and get time on a larger one in the city, the ''Minsk-22". V!ktor Lavr,ntevich Tret'y~k has been working on programs to describe the dynamics of various fish stocks, but says he has produced nothing particularly original as yet.
PINRO works closely with the local fishing fleet, and in fact gets 80% of its support directly from industry. Ponomarenko described the program of forecasting fish catches, which has 5 time-scales:
( 1) Short-term forecasts -- up to about a month. (2) Quarterly -- up to 3 months ahead. ( 3) Annual -- for a year ahead. ( 4) Long-term -- 1.5 or 2 years. (5) Long-range -- 5, 10 or 15 years.
The short-period forecasts are used in developing a fishing strategy for vessels as they leave port. Longer ones affect plans for building or purchasing new ships and gear, design ing processing facilities, and so on. There is a conference with industry heads every week to draw up plans for ships or expeditions about to leave. One day I had a tour of the port and fish processing plants, similar to that 2 years ago. One of the 6000-ton "artist" class of factory trawlers was unloading Patagonian hake directly into refrigerator cars. This vessel was the Rembrant and, appropriately enough, had been built in Holland. It is of 1800 HP and carries a total complement of 101, including those who work on the processing lines. The Rembrant fishes in the south Atlantic, either east or west, and can carry 1600 tons of frozen fish plus 100 tons of meal. At the other extreme, there were in port quite a number of old 85 -8- steam trawlers that operate in the Barents Sea and produce about 200 tons a month each. The shore plant was filleting cod, redfish, wolffish and others, while the smoking rooms produced tasty hot-smoked cod and cold-smoked Greenland halibut. Another visit was to the Hydroelectric developments in the wooded Tuloma River valley, which enters the bay at the old town of Kola. The lower plant has a conventional ladder type fishway. The upper plant, built only a few years ago by a Finnish firm, has an underground powerhouse blasted ou~ of bedrock, and a tailrace a kilometre long, half of it also underground. The fishway takes off from this tunnel not far from the turbines, runs up a side tunnel and ends in a fish lock that gets the salmon up into the dam. Midway along the ladder is a round hole with a seeing-eye counting device that registers the fish passing in three size categories. Smolts going downstream mostly go through the turbines, which spin at a fairly fast rate for this (2 or 3 revolutions per second). Though much of the river is now ponded, there are still some salmon-producing tributaries above the upper reservoir. However the total spawning run is only a thousand or so adults, and it is too soon to assess the effect of the new dam.
Other public facilities visited in or near Murmansk included a theatre, a cinema, a nursery school, a grade school, and a rest house or sanitarium that specializes in mud baths and similar physiotherapy (and where we had an excellent lunch). Other entertainment included a tour of the city on a cold wet day, and the tundra hills behind where is located the rotating antenna that brings in TV programs via satellite. On the Tuloma trip we stopped briefly to scout for mushrooms. Russians are compulsive mushroom-gatherers, and I was curious 86 -9-
to see what varieties they used; the f~w we found were suspicious-looking (to me) orange polypores, but Ponomarenko assured me that they were excellent, and that many other kinds are used. There were also some poganki (toadstools), and I found some small Coprinus that 1 would have eaten, but the locals rejected them.
PINRO publishes "Trudy", now in its 24th volume, of which the St. John's Station has an almost complete set. There is also a "Materialy" series, somewhat comparable to our former Progress Reports. Fishing manuals are also prepared, and various books and brochures.
The Academy of Sciences is also active in northern waters. Their main institute is now situated on the coast outside of Kola fjord, accessible by a twice-a-week boat in summer. There is a smaller station near Kandalaksha on the White Sea. Their publication Trudy Murmanskogo Biologicheskogo Instituta is represented by a f~w volumes in our libraries. 87
News from Siberia
By W. E. Ricker 88
News from Siberia
by W. E. Ricker
An old shaman had 333 sons but only one daughter, named Angara. She was the apple of his eye and he guarded her jealously, but somehow she fell in love with a youth named Yenisei who lived many leagues to the west. Early one morning Angara quietly left home and set out to join her lover. When the shaman woke and found her gone he was furious. With his magical powers he seized a huge rock and hurled it after her. But it fell short, Angara continued on her way, eventually found Yenisei, and the two journeyed together down to the polar sea. The proof of this story is that the big rock can still be seen where the Angara River leaves Lake Baikal, and it is still called Shamanskii Kamen', the shaman's stone. To-day the Angara-Yenisei is the next major USSR river system that is to get the "cascade" treatment of dams throughout its full length. The first one is just above Irkutsk; it backs the river up right to the lake and raises the lake level 1 or 2 metres. It also drowned the tracks of the trans-Siberian railway, which had to be rerouted over the hills -- a shorter distance but with a considerable grade and less exciting scenery. Next downstream is the Bratsk dam, said to produce more power than any other single unit in the world, and a third is under construction. The Yenisei has one dam so far, above Krasnoyarsk. The reason for selecting this system for early development, in preference to the Ob for example, is that it has a steeper gradient and flows through regions particularly rich in coal and ores of various sorts, so that major industrial developments are projected. The only important migratory fish to be affected is the inconnu, 89 -2- and its stock is not particularly large. On balance they hope for increased fish production from the increased water area. In any event, among Siberian Rivers the Yenisei, Lena and Indigirka all have relatively small fish stocks and fisheries. Those of the Ob are 15 or 20 times as great, and for a very interesting reason. In the lower 1000 km or so of its course the Ob lacks oxygen in winter, and fish (mainly coregonids) have to evacuate it -- some wintering in the brackish Ob Gulf, others upstream. In spring the fish rush back into the 'dead' zone and utilize the rich growth of plankton and benthos that blooms rapidly during the growing season. Incidentally, the Ob inconnu run upstream as far as Novosib1rsk,~ where a dam stops. them, and in its tributary the Irtysh they even get into China -- a dis tance of at least 5000 km as the river flows. If the fish that reach China have come all the way from salt water, this consider ably exceeds the longest known salmon migrations, on the Yukon and Amur Rivers. Cossacks arrived in the Angara valley during the 1620's and the town of Irkutsk was founded a generation later. From the beginning the Baikal "sea" fascinated the Russians. There is a long song in the heroic style, composed during the last century and still sung, which extols the lake's beauties and the accomplishments of its peoples. The trans-Siberian railway originally had an "aquatic" section, a trip across Baikal by steamship in summer, or on tracks laid across the ice in winter later replaced by shore-line trackage. Biological interest dates back to Pallas and others in the late 1700's, but the first extensive description of the fauna and physical conditions was by two Polish enthusiasts who had been exiled to Siberia; B. I. Dybovsky and V. Godlevsky. These men sounded, dredged and collected during 1869 and 1870, using their private means to defray expenses. After the railway was built an expedition led by Professor A. A. Korotnev sailed the lake for three years, 90 -3-
1900-02. The first biological station was established in 1919 by the Academy of Sciences, later taken over by Irkutsk univer sity. After a large-scale Academy "Expedition" in 1925-27, in 1928 a new biological station (later called Limnological Station, now Limnological Institute) was opened and still flourishes. It is situated near the lake's outlet at the village of Listvyanka or Listven{chnoe (both names are used, derived from l{stvinnitsa =larch). A creek nearby was the scene of a gold rush in the early part of the century. The university's biological station also operates year-round; it is situated 25 miles farther up the coast, and is accessible only by water, by ice, or by trail. We arrived in Irkutsk on the evening of September 22 - Evgenii Dm{trovich Gusev and myself. Next morning snow was falling and a stiff breeze blew down the Angara. While waiting for a ride to Listvyanka we had a look at the local museum - with a small but good anthropological and ethnological section. When the Russians arrived there were two principal peoples in the area. Most numerous were the northern or Buryat Mongols who herded sheep on the hilly grasslands lying on the southern, eastern and middle part of the western sides of Baikal. The lake's name is from their language, as is the tale of the shaman's daughter. At the northern end of the lake were the Tungus or Yevenki, a forest people mainly, whose bands extended north to the Arctic Ocean. They and their eastern neighbours the Yakuts had a way of life similar to our woodland Indian tribes, including vessels, teepees and even small canoes made of birch bark -- though the local tree produces a bark that is much inferior to ours. Both Buryats and Tungus did some fishing in Baikal and elsewhere; gill-nets of tree fibers and of horse hair were on display. Earlier cultures have been excavated at various sites, extending back to the old stone age. 91 -4-
At 2 p.m. the Director of the Limnological Institute picked us up and we drove down to the lake over the rolling wooded country that skirts the lateral bays of Irkutsk reservoir. In one of these a small ice-breaker was tied up to shore -- one . of two used to ferry freight and passengers across the lake early in the century, now used as a base by a local athletic club. In spite of the fresh· snow, the birches and aspens had scarcely begun to turn color, but larches were farther along .. These plus pine and spruce made up the forest. The Institute is now operated by the Siberian Section of the Academy of Sciences. Its laboratory building is situated not far from the lake shore. Behind and uphill are three apart ment buildings for staff, and a fourth nearly completed. The village nearby consists of only a few cottages, and some staff members have homes 50 miles away in Irkutsk, commuting on week ends. A small-boat basin has been built 300 yards or so from the laboratory; the coast here is very exposed, but fortunately the prevailing winds are offshore. After a tour of the building and museum, about 5 o'clock we embarked on the flagship of the Institute'£ fleet, the G. Yu. Vereshchagin, named after a former Director. With us were Dr. Bor{s Konstant{novich Moskalenko, head of the Laboratory of Ichthyology, and one of his staff, Igor Petrovich Shumflov. We ran north into a quartering offshore wind for about 4 hours. The plan had been to set a net that evening, but the wind was too strong, so we anchored for the night. Morning found us in Bukhta Peschannaya (sandy bay), a tourist "base" with small cottages accommodating up to 500. It lies between two promon tories the Bolshaya and Malenkaya Kolokolnya (big and little bell towers). Across the lake the eastern mountains were silhouetted by the rising sun. About 6 o'clock we moved south a mile or so, near Baklannii Kamen• (cormorant rock), a skiff was lowered and a bottom gill-net was set in about 50 metres of water. This was a monofilament nylon net about 150 metres -5- 92
long, 3 deep, and 40 mm bar mesh -- the legal minimum on Baikal. The crew predicted gloomily that there would be few fish or none, that the site was not a good one, that we should be across the lake where the Selenga River enters, etc., etc. When the net was lifted with about 3 dozen nice omul after only half an hour, they still insisted this was a very poor catch, though to me it seemed excellent. The omul, a large cisco, is by far the most important food fish in the lake. The fish we got were immature specimens 12-14 inches long and 5-6 years old. (The matures are on their way to spawn in tributary rivers, especially the Selenga, which they ascend as far as Mongolia.) The incidental catch was one specimen each of the two principal pelagic sculpins: yellowfin and longfin. Once on board, the morning's catch was hurried to the galley; later we had omul ukho (fish soup) for lunch and fried omul for dinner. The ship returned to Sandy Bay, and nearly everyone went ashore to (1) walk along the frozen beach; ( 2) look for mushrooms; ( 3) inspect the Institute's "base" there -- a good-sized building with laboratories and living quarters; (4) climb the big campanile. A new tree occurred sparingly, a 5-needle pine that produces edible nuts, called cedar (kedr) in Russian. On the south side of the lake it forms large forests in places, and in fact eating pine nuts is a favorite occupation in Siberia, like eating sunflower seeds in Kiev. (In both cases cracking the shell and extracting the kernel is all done with the front teeth and tongue, in one fast operation.) The understory near the lake included exten sive stands of a small rhododendron, which flowers about the end of May. The big bell-tower formerly had a navigation light on top, and a stairs and ramp had been built to haul up drums of oil or carbide. When the light was abandoned the stairs remained for tourists' amusement, but one day a couple fell off the top, so the ladder was removed at a critical pitch. Thus I had to leave the summit to the dozen or so ravens whose 93 -6- favorite haunt it is. The mushrooms most in demand were a yellow gilled type called maslyata (maslo =butter); I tried one raw (frozen} and the flavour was good. There was also an edible yellow false-maslyata, a pore fungus. While we were on shore a small tug came along, manned by three Buryats who wondered where they might get some omul, but our catch had not been large enough to spare any.
After this interval~our ship continued on up the coast for several hours. Two or three tows of logs passed us, chugging down-lake. The terrain gradually became drier and grass replaced trees except on the tops of the hills. Mostly the immediate coast consisted of steep cliffs, but occasionally a valley sloped gently to the shore, and in one such place a herd of 150 or so cattle came down to drink. This change of scenery corresponds to the presence of an enclave of Buryats living in a 11 National District" to the west of the lake, The weather had been fairly good, still freezing but with sunny intervals and a more moderate breeze, and the plan was to go up to the "Little Sea" behind Ol'khon Island and anchor for the night. This is the best fishing area on the lake. However clouds rolled in quickly about 5 o'clock and it began to snow heavily, so we put about and. ran for home. arriv ing about 3 a.m. Next day we visited more laboratories, the library, and a sanatorium nearby, walked to the top of Chersky's summit for a view across the lake and down the Angara (Chersky did the first geological study of the region). Found the cheremukha in fruit, and they were astringent like choke-cherries, as I suspected. Then in Dr. Moskalenko's apartment we had tea with skoros61 or "fast-salted'' omul, which means practically raw. (You cut a fresh omul into 5 or 6 chunks, cover them with water and add 2 tablespoons of salt, then eat it almost immedi ately). Pike do occur in Baikal but are quite scarce, and 94 -7- evidently they don't have a Triaenophorus problem. The address of the Institute is as follows: Limnologicheskii Institut SO AN SSSR Poselok Listvenichnoe Irkutskaya Oblast USSR Director: Dr. G. I. Galazy Scientific Secretary: A. G. Skryabin The scientific staff numbers about 50, and there are about 200 employees in all. Their largest vessel is the Vereshchagin, about 40 metres long, and there are 6 others of sizes ranging down to the Formica, about 8 metres long. The Institute is organized into 9 laboratories, as follows: 1 • Laboratory of Hydrology and Hydrophysics Head: v. M. Sokol'nikov 2. Laboratory of Hydrochemistry Head: K. K. Votintsev 3. Laboratory of Climatology Head: N. P. Ladeishchikov 4. Laboratory of Lake Basins and Bottom Deposits Head: vacant 5. Laboratory of Palaeolimnology Head: Chlen-Korrespondent AN SSSR Florentsov 6. Laboratory of Dendrology Head: G. ,I. Galazy 7. Laboratory of Geomorphology Head: Yu. P. Parmuzin 8. Laboratory of Hydrobiology Head: Margarita Yu. Bekman 95 -8-
9. Laboratory of Ichthyology Head: Dr. B. K. Moskalenko (coregonids) Others: I. P. Shum!lov (omul) v. D. Postukhov (seals) E. A. Koryakov (cottids and golomanki) (A. G. Skryabin also works on whitefishes or did up to recently) Baikal covers 31,500 km2 at 455 m above sea level. It is the oldest lake in the world, dating from the early Miocene, about 30 million years ago. In the beginning it was not especially deep, and in fact the present lake has been formed by the coalescence of three separate basins. However its bottom has gradually subsided over the years at a faster rate than sediments were being deposited, even though these now exceed 1000 metres thickness in places. Thus it is not only the deepest lake in the world, but it keeps getting deeper. Earthquakes are frequent in the basin, and after a recent one it was found that the bottom had dropped another 15 metres in one part of the lake. In 1862 a section of the shore disappeared beneath the water, including a small village, forming a bay several square miles in extent. Formerly the maximum depth was reported as 1714 m, but recent soundings have not confirmed this, and 1620 m is the present official maximum. (Tanganyika comes next, with 1435 m.) The average depth of Baikal is as much as 730 m, and only 8% of its surface is less than 50 m. Like several other old deep lakes, the inhabitants of Baikal include a high proportion of endemics: about two-thirds of the total of 500 plants and 1200 animals. Three animal groups have developed "species swarms", the gammarid amphipods (33 genera and about 300 species), gastropod molluscs (134 species, with gilled forms predominating), and cottoid fishes (Cottidae, 33 species; Comephoridae, 2 species). Certain other groups are represented by only one or a few endemics. There 96 -9- are a few sponges, including a large columnar species, a few bivalves and ologochaetes, one polychaete, one copepod, one tintinnian, and a few diatoms of marine affinities. In general the endemics live in the pelagic region or on the bottom below 50 metres, whereas the "modern" or widely-distributed animals mostly inhabit bays and shallows, and tend to be scarce. The omul and the seals are the principal exceptions. During the 1930's and 1940's there was a long argument between G. Yu. Vereshchagin and L. S. Berg about the ancestry of the Baikal endemic biota. The former pointed to the sponges, the polychaete, tintinnian, marine-type diatoms and cottids in arguing for a marine origin. Berg pointed out that no marine sediments younger than Silurian have been found in the region, and claimed that the ancestors of the endemics were survivors of a Pliocene freshwater biota that once inhabited much of central Asia, perhaps North America as well (as suggested by the Epischura), and was replaced by northern species when the climate cooled. More recent work by M. M. Kozhov and others suggests that Vereshchagin was closer to the truth. Although the Baikal area has been above the sea since the Palaeozoic, the regions to the west (Tethys Sea) and to the east have both seen extensive marine transgressions during Tertiary time. During the retreat of these seas there was abundant opportunity for acclimatization of a few marine forms to fresh water (as happened more recently in the case of the alewife and sea lamprey in Lake Ontario). Baikal formerly had an outlet northeastward to the Lena water shed, and in lakes of that region, remnants of a former large lake basin, several of the Baikal sculpins and its unique polychaete have recently been found. The sculpins seem related to certain Pacific Ocean forms, and an intermediate genus Mesocottus still lives in the Amur River, which has had connec tions with the Lena. On the other hand, some of the Baikal molluscs have turned up in Lake Kosogol in Mongolia, and its large sponge has been identified in sediments of an extinct 97 -10- lake to the westward. Finally, the Baikal amphipods have some what distant ~tives in the Caspian Sea, suggesting that both are descendants of forms that lived in the Tethys Sea. Most of the "modern'' elements in the Baikal fauna probably reached it during or after the Pleistocene. The very cold water prevents most of them from competing effectively with the native forms except in the shore zone. Here belong the abundant omul and less abundant whitefishes, the scarce taimen and lenok of the genus Hucho, the Siberian sturgeon, rudd, ide, perch, pike, burbot, a fair number of shallow-water invertebrates, and the Baikal seal. But many thihgs are lacking, for example, there are no beetles, bugs, mayflies or dragonflies. The Baikal seal is a close relative of the arctic ringed seal: it survives the winter by keeping breathing holes open, and the pups are born in covered lairs in areas of broken ice. Carp have been planted and occur in bays along the south side, but there is no evidence of reproduction. So far no other fish has been intro duced by man. Much of the recent work of ichthyologists and hydro biologists at Listvenichnoe has centered around production processes in the lake. In this they emphasize the pelagic region because of its great extent. The ecological setup there is somewhat as follows. Phytoplankton is consumed by a species of Epischura that occurs in great numbers (this North American genus is known to occur elsewhere in Asia only in one Kamchatkan lake). It is eaten by the pelagic amphipod Macrohectopus, also a dominant species. In warmer years Cyclops and Daphnia may occur significantly, but are always a minor component of the plankton. The crustaceans are eaten mainly by 2 species of golomanka (Comephorus), belonging to a cottoid family found nowhere else. In many respects they resemble an Indiana cave fish: unpigmented, semi-transparent, v1v1parous, with a large flat head and big mouth. Unlike cave-fish they have functional 98 -11- eyes of normal size, and are very intolerant of warm water, succumbing when exposed to 8°C. The smaller and more pelagic species reaches 15 em, the larger one 20 em. Though large in total biomass, golomanki do not form schools, so commercial exploitation is not possible. The two pelagic sculpins are less numerous but still abundant; the yellowfin species is caught and used for canning or for reduction, but in no great volume (800 tons a year). Cottoid fishes have no air bladder to help regulate buoyancy, so all these species maintain position by movements of their large pectoral fins. Next in biomass but tops in usefulness is of course the omul (Coregonus autumnalis), which eats Epischura, Macrohectopus, and young sculpins and golomanki. In Baikal it is a stream-spawning species, now reduced in abundance presumably by overfishing. White fishes occur but are much less common, and they too have decreased in recent years. There is a stream-spawning form referred to Coregonus pidschian and a lake-spawning form referred to g. lavaretus by A. G. Skryabin. Both species eat gastropods and amphipods in water up to about 150 m deep. There are sculpins that live much beyond this, two species being found in even the deepest trenches -- one with tiny eyes, the other with telescope eyes; but no usable concentrations of bottom fishes occur outside of 100 metres. As for the quantitative relationships, I will list the titles and summarize the abstracts of papers on the subject presented at the early-September conference at Sandy Bay on problems related to the International Biological Programme.
G. I. Popovskaya: [Phytoplankton of the Baikal pelagic region.] Mean annual standing crop, 6.5 g/m2 wet weight. A. I. Meshcheryakova: [Primary production in Baikal.] Average production is 103 g carbon/m2/year, with much year to-year variation. 99 -12-
E. L. Afanas'eva: [Total stock and patterns of distribution of zooplankton in Baikal.] Mean production over 6 years was 168 g/m2; this means 4.2 million tons/year in the pelagic region, of which 1.7 million is large crusta ceans suitable for fish food. G. I. Pomazkova: [Yearly and seasonal changes in the zooplankton of Lake Baikal (Bolshie Koty in southern Baikal), from observations over many years.] E. L. Afanas'eva: [The importance of cladocerans and rotifers in the pelagic plankton of Baikal.] Both groups are rather insignificant. V. V. Cherepanov: [Biocoenotic structure and productivity of the Baikal population.] V. V. Smirnov and N. s. Smirnova-Zalumi: [Patterns of change in the biological characteristics of the Baikal omul as a basis for computing its stock and production.] The Derzhavin-Boiko method of analysis is used, plus rate of growth; no data are given. V. v. Smirnov and L. A. Ustyuzhanina-Gurova: [Utilization of the food supply in Lake Baikal by omul.] In 1967 the omul consumed 5900 tons of Epischura or 0.14% of the annual production; 8400 tons or 8.4% of Macro hectopus production; and 3580 tons or 14.3% of the production of young cottoids. I. P. Shum1lov: [The condition of the north-Baikal omul stocks and ways of increasing them.] The stock has decreased from 128,000 centners in 1940-44 to 54,000 in 1960-64. Advises restricting the fishery to the mature part of the stock, and using artificial reproduction. E. A. Koryakov: [Production of pelagic sculpins and golomanki.] The stock of the 2 species of golomanka is 45-80 thousand tons, and the annual production about 40,000 180 -13-
tons. Sculpin production is of the order of 10,000 tons. Golomanki require 200,000 tons of food a year, pelagic sculpins about 100,000 tons. v. D. Pastukhov: [Abundance, biomass and production of Baikal seals.] A stock of 26,500 seals (age 1 and older) weighs 15,500 tons and produces 6800 pups each year. About 11% of the stock (older than pups) dies naturally each year, and 4% are killed. Of the pups, 21% are killed and 19% die naturally, leaving 60% survivors at age 1. Annual production is 2800 tons, of which 21% or 590 tons is used by man. B. K. Moskalenko: [Biological productivity of the pelagic region of Baikal.] Productivities in kg/ha/yr are as follows: primary, 21,000; zooplankton, 1680; pelagic sculpins and golomanki, 25.5 (of which 0.2 is used by man); omul, 1.3; seals, 0.1. The lake needs a larger stock of omul, and also some new pelagic fish capable of utilizing more of the golomanka production and/or increasing the utilization of plankton. The lake should yield about 20,000 tons of fish each year to man, or 6 kg/ha. K. K. Votintsev: [The biological cycle and balance of organic matter in the Baikal pelagial.] Primary production of 110 g organic carbon/m2/year accounts for 90% of the organic input; allochthonous materials are not more than 10%. The phytoplankton- Epischura link involves a respiration loss of 22% of the primary production. Pelagic fishes dissipate in metabolism 8% of the annual Epischura production. Bacterial production is 40 g C/m2/year. About 10 g C/m 2 reach the bottom of th~ l~ke each year, where 50-60% is mineralized. 101 -14-
The proceedings of this conference are to be published, and it will be interesting to get more detail on the methods used at various stages. Some of it will probably be presented at the International IBP-PF Conference to be held in Warsaw next year. The Sandy Bay meeting of course did not limit itself to Baikal (200 attended), and for that matter the Baikal Limnological Institute does not: they conduct studies on other waters in Siberia. For example, next summer an 'expedition' to Lake Taimir (75° N, 100° E) is planned. Dr. Moskalenko, who worked for 25 years or so studying coregonids in all of the large arctic rivers of Europe and Asia, looks forward to this with keen anticipation. He says that Taimir is the most northern large lake in the world, which is true if you use the right definition of "large". To resume the diary, we drove to town with Igor Petrovich Thursday afternoon, saw some of the sights of Irkutsk, including sport fishing for grayling from row-boats in the river, and said good-bye. Next morning it was snowing again, so I spent the day writing up notes. Saturday we flew to Moscow, a 7-hour trip by daylight and with good visibility in places. The forest alternated with steppe until Novosibirsk, when it became steppe or steppe-parkland almost consistently as far as the Ural region. Between Omsk and Kurgan there was a region densely peppered with sloughs and lakes mostly round or nearly so, with varying amounts of water, algae blooms, salt encrustations or completely dry. They varied in size from about 200 yards diameter up to a mile or two. At first I thought they had a prevailing NW-SW elongation like the Carolina "bays", but this was due to fore shortening (reflection from the sun in the SW made them visible at a considerable distance). When directly below, the smaller ones were nearly circular without consistent bias, the larger ones tended to be more irregular with possibly a NW-SE trend. 102 -15-
An air photo of the area would be interesting -- probably it is a karst region. Moscow at 4 p.m., with sunny weather and an agree·able temperature, but next day came rain and chilly fall weather.
Moscow W. E. Ricker September 29, 1969 103
Visit to Georgia (Gruzinskii SSR)
By W. E. Ricker 104
Visit to Georgia (Gruzinskii SSR)
By W. E. Ricker
Of the numerous peoples living in the USSR in the Caucasus region and southward, the Georgians are one of the more numerous. Their language seems unrelated to any of the major linguistic groups. It reached a peak of literary excellence about 1000 AD, at a time when the country had been independent for a century or two and had extended its boundaries to include much of the Caspian's western littoral. The out standing literary figure was Sh6ta Rustaveli, who wrote a long narrative poem "The man in the panther's skin", a sort of combination of The Three Musketeers and the Arabian Nights. This is still read assiduously in Georgia; unfortunately, the only metrical version in English is not inspired poetry. After this "Golden Age", Georgia was overrun and ruled by a succession of invaders, the most recent switch being during the first half of the last century when the Russians were gradually pushing back the boundaries of the Turkish Empire. Batumi, which is close to the present Turkish border, was established as a Russian frontier outpost with cannon mounted on the hills behind, and developed into Georgia's major Black Sea port. I travelled from Moscow to Batumi by train October 11-12, accompanied by Gene Gusev of VNIRO. The train traversed the east-Ukrainian steppes, with fall colours in the windbreak along the line, rounded Taganrog Bay to Rostov-on-Don, then climbed gradually to a low pass that brought us down to the Black Sea after dark. Along the sea-coast bluffs of banded limestone were divided by precipitous valleys, and the train made frequent stops at the resort towns throughout the night. 105 -2-
Morning showed the cultivated plain of west Georgia, and by noon we were passing hillside tea-fields and soon reached the moist and semi-tropical city of Batumi.
Georgia Branch of VNIRO Gruz!nskoe Otdelenie VNIRO, Ninoshv!li St., Bat6mi, USSR
This Institute has had a checkered career. It was started during the early 1930's as the Georgia Fishery Research and Biological Station I Nauchnaya Rybokhozy~istvennaya i Biolog!cheskaya St~ntsiya Gr6zii I apparently with local backing. The three volumes of their Trudy that appeared before the war are mostly concerned with biological surveys of lakes in the Republic. Some marine work was begun, but stopped abruptly when their ship the Abkhazets sank off Batumi in 1938 with some loss of life, including the scientist Nina Chokhuri. During the war activity was largely suspended. Afterward the Station was at first attached to the Azov-Don Fishery Station in Rostov, then later taken over by the Georgia Academy of Sciences. During this period G. P. Barach joined the staff, after retiring from a long teaching career, and published his studies on the Black Sea "salmon" that spawn in the mountain streams and grow rapidly out at sea during the cool months (see FRB translation No. 286). He died in 1961 at the age of 81. In 1963 the Ministry of Fisheries of the USSR assumed responsibility for the Station and it became a branch of VNIRO. This has apparently been a favorable development, permitting expansion of the work. A new research ship was built, and in fact arrived while I was there. They have a pond experimental station at another location. 106 -3-
Present staff is 37 scientists, including 11 Kandidats and 1 Doctor. Publication of their journal was resumed in 1959, and is now in volume 13 (1968). It is now called Tr6dy Gruzinskoi N.-I. Rybokhozyaistvennoi Stantsii, and carries articles in Russian and in Georgian. The Director of the Institute is Leon!d Elizbarovich Tsuladze, and his Deputy is Repat Kauzharadze. The work is divided among 6 Laboratories, as follows:
1. Laboratory of Marine Investigations Leader: Viktor Karp,zovich Borchkhadze 2. Laboratory of Hydrobiology Leader: Revaz I. Chkha!dze 3. Laboratory of Inland Waters Leader: Otar Georgievich Burchuladze 4. Laboratory of Pond-fish Culture Leader: Olga D. Peskova 5. Laboratory of Water Toxicology Leader: Nikolai Dm!trievich Mazmanid! 6. Laboratory of Fishery Technology Leader: Ra!sa Bor!sova
The Institute also maintains a good public and experimental aquarium (Dm!trii Abasovich Mikeladze, in charge) and has plans for a "delphinarium•• to be built over the year or two ahead. Present exhibits include Caspian seals as well as fur seals from the F~r East. One tank contained the hybrid sturgeon (beluga x sterlet) that have been produced by VNIRO in the hope of having a fish that would grow as fast as a beluga yet be well adapted to fresh water throughout its life. This has worked up to a point, but instead of having hybrid vigor the cross is said to be very unagressive, and always loses out in any competition for food with native species of sturgeons. 107 -4-
The toxicology laboratory is the only one in the USSR that works with sea-water. They are most concerned with petroleum pollution, not so much the gross oil slicks as the components that get dissolved in the water. Effects on fish are studied intensively, including histological changes, morphology of blood cells and blood enzymes, metabolic effects, survival times, etc. Experimental studies of effects on various plankton organisms are also under way. Dr. Mazmanidi claims that 12 million tons of petroleum are lost in transit each year, presumably being dispersed in the ocean. Incidental information: ( 1) When fed carotinoids, trout have a lowered respiratory coefficient, i.e., the carotinoids supply some oxygen. The quality of the flesh is greatly improved on such a diet. (2) To facilitate cleaning aquaria, a coarse nylon false bottom is used, sometimes covered with gravel. Wastes fall through the nylon mesh, and are flushed out periodically through a bottom drain. I found Georgian hospitality lavish, in fact over whelming. During 6 days in Batumi we were guests at at least one elaborate meal each day. One of these was on board a small purse-seiner (Captain, Gtvi Ukleba) on which we set out to catch horsemackerel -- without actually finding enough fish for a set, however. Another luncheon was on an open-air table behind the Institute, where the menu included fish soup made from a tolstolob that had been seined from a large holding pond an hour earlier. Still another was at a restaurant on a knoll near the Botanical Garden north of town -- the garden, incidentally, is really outstanding. However the climax came at the home of Alexander Abuladze in the town of Zestaf6ni, where we stopped over for the night during a trip by jeep from Batumi to Tbil!si. Mr. Abuladze was evidently an old friend of Dr. Tsuladze's. He had been warned of our coming, so he invited 6 leading citizens to share the honour. At the dinner he 108 -5- appointed Leonid as tamada or toastmaster -- a responsible job, for each toast must be accompanied by a considerable speech, and everyone present must be toasted, plus ancestors, parents, wives, children, rodina and so on. And the food was as abundant and elaborate as the toasts. The journey to Tbilisi took a leisurely two days, because our Don cossak driver thought 50 km/hr was about as fast as the jeep should go. First we cut across some foothills of the Asia Minor mountain ranges. Snow covered higher summits in the background, where wolves and bears still flourish, though lions have disappeared. Then came the plain of the Ri&ni River, leading to Kutasi, where we detoured to examine a small cave in a beech forest area called Satopl!a ("region of honey"). On past long lines of trucks and carts loaded with grapes, waiting to get their loads in to local wineries. The wine, incidentally, is stored in churi, large conical-bottomed earthenware jars that are buried in the earth (Mr. Abuladze had 3 or 4 embedded in his cellar floor); these are evidently a direct survival from classical times. After leaving Zestafoni next day, the jeep climbed through yellow-brown forests up over a pass at 1000 metres, then down to the dry plains of east Georgia and the Kura River. Passed through Gori, Stalin's bll±hplace, where a large statue of him still exists. At Mtskheta, the ancient capital of Georgia, there is a 5th- to 11th-century church with the customary 12-sided tower, and with a severed hand carved in its wall, the subject of a recent popular romance. A little farther downriver comes Tbilisi, city of hot springs, the latter said to have been discovered by one of the kings while chasing a wounded deer. In spite of the general dryness and long-standing deforestation, there are several interesting lakes near Tbilisi. Only one is artificial: a large reservoir northwest 109 -6- of town, fed by a canal from the mountains, its slopes partly irrigated and planted to forests and parks, and complete with beaches and marinas. More interesting was Kumisi, a natural lake about 10 square miles in extent, situated on a prairie southeast of the city with the railway to Armenia skirting its eastern shore. Here a small fishing collective had recently been organized, and took 120 tons of fish in 1968. We watched them set a seine 600 m long on ground that had been baited the day before, but luck was poor. Still, they got enough for a boiled carp luncheon that had to be eaten before we left. The lake has been stocked with various kinds of fish, including the heat-tolerant cisco, grass carp and silver carp from Asia, and some of the hybrid sturgeon mentioned above. All of these turned up in the seine in small numbers, but the main catch was ordinary carp of the "mirror" variety -- with scattered irregular scales and much bare skin. There was also one native fish, the khram~lya, a medium-sized cyprinid highly regarded in Georgia. The west side of the lake had extensive reed beds and numerous water birds, including some red-breasted geese; the drier parts of this swale are said to have sheltered a panther or two not too long ago. Another small industry at Kumisi is dredging mud from the bottom of the lake, by hand; the mud is considered a sure cure for rheumatism and similar complaints. After these and other excursions, we flew back from Tbilisi to Moscow on October 23, crossing some of the high peaks of the Caucasus and with the great volcano Elbruz standing on the northern flank of the range.