BUENOS AIRES, March 3. /TASS/: The Argentine and Russian sides agreed to develop scientific cooperation in the field of fishery, Deputy Minister of Agriculture of Russia, Head of the Federal Agency for Fishery Ilya Shestakov said on Tuesday.
"We have agreed on cooperation in the scientific field, in particular, we will provide the Argentine side with our methods for estimating crab stocks," he told reporters after the first meeting of the Russian-Argentine intergovernmental commission on fishery. The parties also agreed to consider the possibility of joint development of krill in the Antarctic region.
"Russian companies have an interest in developing mariculture in two bays here, we are talking about growing scallops and oysters. Argentina has plans to increase volumes - with a 800,000 catch, they produce only 4,000 tonnes as part of sea framing," he said. According to him, additional research is currently underway to see which technologies may be applicable in these areas.
According to Director of the Russian Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography Kirill Kolonchin, the Russian side offered Argentina cooperation in the field of new technologies for using crab production waste to produce chitosan and chitin. "Argentina does not have such technologies, they have a big problem with waste. They like the idea, because today they pay money for the disposal of crab production waste," he added.
"Many proposals regarding the management of stocks of aquatic biological resources received an instant response from the Argentine side," Kolonchin said. According to him, Argentine officials have already received instructions to work out opportunities for scientific cooperation. "At the first stage, we prepared a memorandum and a work plan for the first six months," he said.
