Russia is running out of fish: problems from the Caspian Sea to Kamchatka

In Russia, since the beginning of 2024, 235 thousand tons of salmon have been caught, the lowest figure in the last 20 years! They say there is no fish. Salmon are usually caught in the Far East, where this year there has been an increased occurrence of bears coming out of the wild in search of food. For them, fish is the main food ration, the foundation of the feeding base! So, officially, this year only 235 thousand tons of salmon were caught, while last year they happily "set a record for the entire history of observations", destroying 609 thousand tons of fish in one go. And this is only legal fishing, not counting illegal trafficking.

It turns out that last year the fish were destroyed because of greed, this year the indicators "collapsed", and in the coming years there is no expectation of improvement. In order to maintain large industrial business, they will "strangle" all the fish that comes! Consequently, in the coming years, there will be a furious hunger among bears and their mass killing.

In addition, every year fish are illegally killed during spawning, and also on an industrial scale. Although the capture of salmon species during spawning is strictly prohibited by law.

And no one will say that:

• Wild animals are deprived of a food base (bears, otters, birds, marine mammals). Hunger will begin, population reduction, and as a chain reaction - the degradation of all dependent species in ecosystems.
• The transport of nutrients from oceanic ecosystems to terrestrial ones is disrupted. Aquatic plants and microorganisms will suffer, which will disrupt the feeding of other organisms and accelerate the degradation of biocenoses at all levels of wildlife.

The first thing we will see is an increase in fish prices for consumers, attempts to catch everything that is possible and impossible for immediate profit, as well as an increase in cases of bears coming out to people in the Far East and their mass killings. However, the degradation of ecosystems is gradual, people will not notice the changes immediately, even if there is a cascade extinction of species!

It is worth noting the following as well.

At the same time, the Ministry of Agriculture banned the catch of bleak in the Astrakhan region until 2026. The problem is that people have destroyed fish in the Volga and Caspian Sea waters in the pursuit of "bleak to beer". According to official departmental data, the amount of fish decreased six times in 20 years. In May, the Governor of the Astrakhan region, Igor Babushkin, said that bleak is on the verge of extinction.

The dates announced are the same: the last 20 years. In the Russian Far East, salmon are being destroyed, in the Caspian Sea and the Volga River - local fish are being destroyed. However, if a ban on fishing bleak can be imposed (a relatively insignificant sector of the economy), no one wants to prohibit the fishing of salmon!

Red fish + precious caviar = huge profit. And under the capitalist management system, there is no consideration of nature conservation issues, because at the center of everything is the extraction of immediate profit!

We must understand that these processes (destruction and devastation of ecosystems) take quite a long time. In order for the governor of the region to come out and publicly state that fish are on the verge of extinction, 20 years must pass and the population must actually decrease six times! Has no one seen the problem before? Could there not have been a ban when the population was reduced by 1-2 times?

Obviously, all of this was known; no one wanted to slow down the extraction of profit! Only when the ecosystems were completely destroyed, when the uncontrollable extinction of species really began, minimal actions were taken. And only because today the catch of fish in the Caspian Sea and especially the Volga River is not a very valuable sector, as it was, for example, before.

It is much more difficult with "red fish" in the Russian Far East because it is literally "fish gold" for businessmen and authorities!

For consumers, prices will rise and they will be told that there is less and less fish: "Buy it before others buy it all!" And people will buy everything to the last, they will put it in storage, but sales will never decline. Therefore, here the conflict only arises between businessmen and bears, who need fish to survive!

Bears will go to people, the media and the authorities will start saying that there are too many of them and an increase in culling is required! Which, in principle, we are already seeing with you.

SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO?

I know that my allies are interested: the problem is voiced, but what to do in general? Is there a solution to the problem? Perhaps the authorities simply do not really know how to solve these problems?

The Ministry of Agriculture has banned the catch of bleak in the Volga and Caspian Sea waters. Bleak is a freshwater fish from the carp family, which is known for its large spawning migrations! That is, it is a large fish, there are almost no similar ones left in these waters. Bleak is one of the few fish species that is still caught in local waters on an industrial scale!

Both bleak and salmon are also destroyed illegally during spawning! BUT! Fish are officially destroyed during their migration TO SPAWN. That is, bleak also migrates from the Caspian Sea to rivers for spawning, just like salmon from the northern seas (oceanic waters) to the rivers of Kamchatka. In both cases, people strike a significant blow to fish each time because industrial fishing takes place.

Now to the solution to the problem.

The Ministry of Agriculture has imposed a ban for a year without taking into account the preservation of other species, without assessing all the interrelated chains in ecosystems! The moratorium period for fishing, the ban, is too insignificant, it will not allow ecosystems to recover. At the same time, there is no ban on interference in other parts of the ecosystems, on the destruction of other species. The authorities have only cared about a commercially valuable fish for a period sufficient to enrich themselves again by destroying bleak after the moratorium is lifted.

In the case of salmon in the Russian Far East, such moratoriums are not even considered, there is a higher circulation of fish from oceanic waters to freshwater ecosystems, and there are too huge "fur interests". No one will slow down these processes, it is easier to kill bears!

Moreover, the population of salmon has already decreased worldwide. For example, the population of Atlantic salmon in the UK has reached a record low level, and 90% of salmon rivers (where fish go to spawn) are classified as "at risk". But no one wants to slow down either! Competition, you know.

The solution to the problem for all states, including Russia, is to immediately establish complete ecological tranquility (CET) in all lesser-affected ecosystems within their territory.

Kamchatka, the Caspian Sea with the waters of the Volga basin and the Kama! As well as other ecosystems where urgent protection of rapidly dying nature is required.

It is necessary to create federal commissions consisting of specialists and representatives of government agencies to assess the complete restoration of biological systems, assess the damage caused by humans over the past decades, and impose a ban on any negative interference in CET zones. That is, all interconnected chains in ecosystems must be evaluated and restored. The only link that must be removed from them is humans.

And to ensure the domestic food market, including fish, please create fish farms. They are now well established in the world, including for growing Atlantic salmon and our Kamchatka pink salmon or chum salmon. However, when creating such farms, it is necessary to use only closed water supply systems (RAS) without creating sea pens, which, according to scientific data, spread diseases from "domesticated" species to wild ones and lead to genetic mixing.

All technologies exist. People do not want to switch to them only because it will force them to immediately spend huge amounts of money to create farms, and forget about profits in the coming years until the market is completely switched to cultivation with extraction from nature.

Currently, the situation is such that fish are simply caught in the wild, taking AWAY the LAST from biological systems. Bear sightings are justified by "increasing numbers", and any environmental problems are blamed on "climate change". People are not guilty! Draft laws legalizing even greater devastation of ecosystems are not noticed, their own crimes are deliberately concealed, and all problems are attributed to "natural processes".

No one wants to stop!

Everyone needs immediate profit here and now. No one is thinking about what they will do when they destroy all fish populations and leave destroyed ecosystems around them. The main thing is to grab now, and then think about where else to grab.

© PAVEL PASHKOV