The Russian Fishery Company’s new trawler Kapitan Vdovichenko is on fishing grounds off the Kuril Islands after completing the 2600-mile delivery trip from along the northern sea route.
The new trawler left the Admiralty Shipyard in St Petersburg earlier this summer. Designed for fishing on Alaska pollock and herring in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea, Kapitan Vdovichenko is the first of the ten ST-192 trawlers ordered by the company to renew its elderly fleet with modern capacity, replacing Soviet-era vessels that have reached their limits in terms of installing the latest technology.
The new designs have a significantly higher processing capacity than the larger number of older vessels they are scheduled to replace, with opportunities to land higher-value seafood products, including surimi, in addition to frozen products, minced fish, fishmeal and fish oil.
Kapitan Vdovichenko is now in its shakedown trip to test all of the systems on board and to make any late-stage adjustments to fine-time the operation of the vessel and its advanced factory deck.
