Results of marine fisheries in the Caspian Sea in 2024

 

The entire life cycle of these species is associated with the marine habitat, where seasonal migrations take place. Sea herring, common sprat, silverside, some gobies make mass migrations in the spring to the freshened waters of the northern part of the sea for reproduction. In the summer-autumn period, the mullet-singil develops northern waters for fattening. Endemic species - anchovy and big-eyed sprat all year round adhere to the zones of circular currents of the Middle and Southern Caspian. Modern fishing is based on the development of stocks of the listed fish species, which form commercial concentrations in various areas of the sea under the influence of biological and environmental factors. The Russian Federation has a high resource potential of marine fish with a recommended catch for 2024 of up to 115 thousand tons, including sprat 97 thousand tons, sea herring 15 thousand tons, mullet - 2.6 thousand tons, gobies - 0.6 thousand tons.

 

Over the past five years, Caspian fishermen have achieved great success, mastering a new type of fishing for common sprat with mid-depth trawls in the waters of the Middle Caspian and increasing the intensity of catching sea herring, mullet, and gobies on the Dagestan coast.

 

The herring catch, the basis of which is Dolginskaya herring, is slightly lower than last year. This is partly offset by an increase in the catch of mullet and gobies.

 

The basis of the marine fishery was common sprat. It should be noted that due to the special weather and climate conditions of autumn 2024 with the late arrival of low water temperatures, and, accordingly, the late onset of conditions for the formation of commercial aggregations of common sprat, autumn-winter fishing this year resumed en masse only in November. At the same time, a significant number of working days in November and December were lost due to storms, which not only complicate the work of fishing vessels, but also break up commercial aggregations of common sprat.

 

Press service of VNIRO