On Iturup, JSC Kurilsky Rybak builds small fishing vessels RB-80
February 13, 2025

While there is much and frequent talk at various levels about the need to revive shipbuilding, ZAO Kurilsky Rybak does not waste time on talk, but has been making the RB-80 fishing vessels it needs for several years.

Anyone who has not been to Iturup for many years literally falls into a stupor at the sight of the changes that have taken place on the island. I experienced a similar feeling a couple of years ago.

And I was recently amazed by the news that Iturup, it turns out, has a shipbuilding industry — at the local enterprise "Kurilsky Rybak", which is engaged in the extraction, processing and artificial reproduction of salmon at the LRZ.

These vessels are small, like the RB-80. This is the kind of small fleet that the enterprise needs for coastal purse seine salmon fishing. This year, at "Kurilsky Rybak", two modern vessels of the MRS-150 type, built in the USA, have appeared (our newspaper has already written about this). But the good old RB-80 cannot be discounted either. Although what the Kurilians are building now is not the same old RB at all: it is, in fact, a fundamentally new vessel with different production and technical characteristics and capabilities.

Chief Engineer of the "Kurilsky Rybak" Andrey Adamovich Guk says that the need to create a ship repair site (and it is he who builds both new kungas and new RBs) was dictated by life: the small-sized fleet available at the enterprise is aging, it needs to be repaired. And where? On the Kuril Islands - nowhere. On Sakhalin too, in principle, there is nowhere and no one: ship repair plants have gone into oblivion. Once, "Kurilsky Rybak" tried to repair MRS-150 in one organization. Result: firstly, it took quite a long time, secondly, it was quite expensive. But this is not the most important. No how you control the repair, no how you look —still remains many shortcomings.

Then a very reasonable solution was born: no one can do it better for then no one can do it for then ... And six years ago, a ship repair section appeared at the enterprise. It was later that the desire and opportunity to build new small vessels appeared. Because, by and large, there is nowhere to buy the necessary fleet— the only company in the Far East that offers small fishing seiners at a high price, which are manufactured according to 20-25 year old designs with minor modifications that, in the opinion of many fishermen, do not particularly affect the efficiency and convenience of fishing.

And everyone needs different ships. On Iturup, for example, salmon predominates, and the vessels for catching it must be appropriate - not like, for example, for navaga. That's why the "Americans" were so suitable for the "Kuril Fisherman" - after all, in Alaska, salmon is caught either with a purse or with drift nets.

But even the excellent American vessels (overseas, they did not stagnate and collapse for many years, as happened in Russia, but developed and improved the entire fishing arsenal) also have a serious drawback. This is the price. Therefore, the company turned its attention to the existing RB-80s, which had already exhausted their resource. They decided to give the vessels a second life. To be more precise, to give a second life to the name "RB-80". Because the ship repairmen left nothing from the previous vessel. They threw everything out of there, replaced the skin by almost 70 percent. In fact, they left only the keel. And then they started stuffing the box with other, more modern mechanisms. They are not cheap, very expensive. But this equipment makes working conditions easier, its presence and correct use made it possible to reduce the number of workers on the vessel. Usually, eight people work on a vessel, and on this RB-11351, which you see in the photo taken in the port bucket, five or six people can work. And hence, as everyone understands, the wages.

Interesting fact: this small vessel went on its first "sighting" a fishing trip just before my departure