In October 2024, a court ordered NBAMR, a major fishing company in Nakhodka, to pay tax debts of more than $400,000.¹ Rosrybolovstvo, the Russian fishery agency, filed lawsuits to cancel the company’s fishing quotas in the Far East.²

Ardatov (Factory ship): On April 15, 2019 in the Sea of Okhotsk, during a cargo transfer from the BMRT Ardatov*,* a sling carrying frozen fish gave way. A box fell on a 25-year-old crew member, causing a closed craniocerebral injury. The crew member died from the injury that night.³

Kapitan Faleev (Factory ship): On April 22, 2019, a fisher aboard the vessel Kapitan Faleev suffered a severe arm injury while fishing at least 100 miles off the coast of Magadan.⁴ His finger got caught in a pulley while he was preparing the trawl, and he lost a finger.⁵ The ship could not return to port because it was blocked by an ice field.⁶ Rescue teams evacuated the fisher by helicopter within minutes and took him to the hospital.⁷ The fisher filed a lawsuit and the court awarded him more than $2,000 for moral damages.⁸ On August 23, 2019, while operating in the Sea of Okhotsk fishing grounds, an electrician on the ship sustained a cerebral contusion, which resulted in the ship losing its safety management certificate from the Federal Fisheries Agency.⁹ On May 9, 2020, NBAMR fired a crew member on the Kapitan Faleev for showing up for work while intoxicated and attacking a colleague in his cabin.¹⁰ The company paid for the crew member to get home and sued him to recover the costs.¹¹ The court ruled in the company’s favor and ordered the crew member to pay the company back for an amount of more than $200.¹²

Kapitan Maslovets (Factory ship): On June 5, 2019, an electrician named Kamysh was hired by NBAMR to work on the Astronom, according to court documents.¹³ Two months later, the company transferred him to work as a deckhand on the Kapitan Maslovets.¹⁴ On November 1, 2019, the company fired him and transferred him to the Nikolay Chepik to be returned home.¹⁵ The company paid roughly $390 in transportation costs and hotel accommodations to cover Kamysh’s trip back home.¹⁶ They withheld approximately $260 from his paycheck to cover these costs, and sought to recover the rest by filing a lawsuit against Kamysh.¹⁷ The court ruled in the company’s favor.¹⁸

Astronom (Factory ship): In January 2020, NBAMR dismissed six sailors of the BMRT Astronom and withheld their wages, claiming that they committed disciplinary infractions.¹⁹ The sailors lived in appalling conditions: expired food, including meat that had to be soaked in vinegar to mask the smell, no water for washing after work, and a malfunctioning freezer without ventilation, creating severe health hazards.²⁰ “People worked in pairs, in shifts, and it was a direct path to tuberculosis,” they said.²¹ They also said they were paid half of what had been promised.²² The prosecutor’s office ordered NBAMR’s general director to correct the labor violations by providing them with back pay.²³ In April 2020, the Nakhodka Prosecutor’s Office found NBAMR in violation of federal labor laws.²⁴ On April 21, 2021, NBAMR sued a former employee of Astronom named Alexander Bondar, seeking to recover $1,000 that they said he owed for food and accommodation on their trawler during the month he was still at sea after resigning from his position due to intolerable working conditions.²⁵ Represented by a union lawyer, Bondar successfully argued that labor laws prohibited such charges without proven employee fault.²⁶ The court found the company’s claims invalid, citing falsified documents and labor rights violations.²⁷

Aleksandr Belyakov (Factory ship): On March 19, 2022, while this ship was fishing in the Sea of Okhotsk, the port-side winch malfunctioned and began to run uncontrollably with increasing speed while the crew was retrieving the trawl. This led the trawl door to break loose and strike a crew member, who died from the accident.²⁸

Nikolay Chepik (Factory ship): On December 5, 2022, NBAMR hired a mechanic to work on this ship.²⁹ On July 7, 2023, the mechanic asked to leave, so he was taken home on a carrier ship.³⁰ The company sued him to recover the costs of transporting him home, and the court ruled in their favor, requiring him to pay at least $1,500.³¹ In a 2022 review, another former worker on this ship said he left early because he wanted to return to his studies. “After two weeks, you realize you’ve mentally recycled every thought possible,” he said. The ship ran out of fruit while they were headed to the fishing grounds, but sometimes the crew members were given a Twix or Mars bar on Sundays.³²

Ilya Konovalov (Factory ship): In 2023, a 69-year-old crew member suffered a head injury on the vessel. He was evacuated and hospitalized.³³

Mekhanik Bryzgalin (Factory ship):
Seawind 1 (Factory ship):
Petropavlovsk (Factory ship):

PJSC Nakhodka Active Marine Fishery Base did not respond to a request for comment.³⁴