The Russian fishing research vessel Atlantida, attached to the Federal Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo, a public body under the supervision of the Russian Ministry of Agriculture), has begun a 45-day and 145-stroke trawl campaign in the kingdom’s Atlantic fishing zone, devoted to the abundance of juveniles of sardines, mackerel, shard and anchovy, his commander, Dmitry Gorokhovich, and the head of the scientific part of the expedition, Vladislav Sidorski, said on Monday, on October 26.
The readings will weigh directly on the captured volumes authorized in Moroccan waters. « Atlantida’s current campaign associates Russian and Moroccan researchers, and the Moroccan government relies on its results to set the quotas of local ships as well as those of the Russian fishing fleet, » explained the head of Rosrybolovstvo’s representation in Morocco, Mikhail Tarasov. The trawl features cover the entire Atlantic zone of the kingdom. The enumeration of young fish from the main commercial species is one of the primary objectives of the mission, said Mr. Sidorski.
This work stems from the intergovernmental agreement on cooperation in the field of sea fishing signed on 15 March 2016 between Moscow and Rabat. The text opens the Moroccan Atlantic zone to Russian trawlers for the capture of small pelagics and leaves it to the kingdom to set each year the overall volume of catches by group of species, fishing areas and reference prices. Rabat also determines the number and type of Russian ships admitted, capped at ten units of 7,765 gross gauge at most each, according to the conditions published by Rosrybolovstvo. A mixed Russian-Moroccan fisheries commission ensures the implementation of the agreement.
The mackerel dominated the catches of 2025
The previous Atlantis campaign, conducted from October 21 to December 2, 2025 with researchers from the National Institute of Fisheries Research (INRH), had totaled 143 trawls between Safi (west) and Lagouira (south). The mackerel had appeared in 69% of the traits, the sardine in 46%, the snails in 30% and the anchovy in 24%, and the sardine had appeared only exceptionally in the catches, according to the report of the Pan-Russian Research Institute on Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO, a Russian public body to which the ship belongs). « The main purpose of trawling remains the collection of scientific data on the abundance of juveniles of commercial species, a key piece of information to predict the state of stocks over the coming years and to found sustainable fishing, » stressed the VNIRO.
Before this departure, the two institutes had signed on board, in Dakhla (south), a protocol providing for more than 140 trawl strokes, more than 70 hydrological stations and 50 planktonic stations. An INRH researcher had joined the dozen Russian scientists on board under the command of Mr. Gorokhovitch. « The data obtained paint a very favorable picture of the state of fish stocks in Morocco, with stable reserves of mackerel and snail, » said Mr. Tarassov in June 2025. He had considered the exploitation of the resources of the Moroccan Atlantic zone sustainable and rational.
Moscow hopes for 100,000 tons per year
The Atlantis and its twin ship, the Atlantniro, had led between August 2024 and the beginning of 2026 the Great African Expedition, a series of campaigns carried out in the waters of Morocco, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone and Mozambique. At the end of this expedition, in February, the Russian authorities estimated a possible increase in Russian catches in the Moroccan Atlantic zone from 60,000 tons to 90,000 or 100,000 tons per year, driven mainly by mackerel and shingle. At the launch of the work, Rosrybolovstvo had mentioned a fivefold increase in Russian catches off the coast of Africa, then close to 100,000 tons per year.
