Crimean oysters were served on the table to the emperor

The owner of the underwater garden Sergey Kulik. Photo: Ivan Zhilin / "Novaya Gazeta"

Katsiveli. In this small, 529-person village near Mount Koshka, between Yalta and Sevastopol, there are only two attractions: an astrophysical observatory and an oyster-mussel farm. It is not known for certain whether the observatory is working. With oysters it is clearer: every week from restaurants in Feodosia, Simferopol, Sevastopol and Yalta, cars drive up to the gate on Vitkevich Street, and the owner of the farm, Sergei Kulik, ships his shellfish. When negotiating a meeting with Sergei, I planned to write: Russian import substitution exists. But Sergei, after listening to me, said: “We will meet if you agree to write about my problems. They want to destroy the farm ”.

Revival of traditions

The life of the "oyster baron" was presented somehow differently. The dirty cherry "nine" on which Sergei and I drove to Katsiveli from Yalta did not fit into this picture. He told his story.

- Until 1913, Russia produced up to 12 million oysters a year and supplied them to Europe. Large oyster farms operated near Feodosia and Sevastopol. After the revolution, production began to deteriorate, and in 1947, Soviet torpedo boats with ballast waters were brought from the Sea of \u200b\u200bJapan to Black Rapana. This predatory mollusk feeds on mussels and oysters, and most importantly, it reproduces well. And already in the fifties, the Black Sea oyster was included in the Red Book.

It is very difficult to restore the population of the Black Sea oyster now. This requires a special nursery, a laboratory, 7-8 biologists-breeders, one and a half to two million dollars of investment, and most importantly - the productivity of about 100 million pieces of spat ( larvae.— I. Zh.) in year. I alone cannot pull this, and I chose a different path - I decided to import Pacific oyster spat from France and England and grow it here. After 3-4 years, the larva turns into a large - up to 12 centimeters - oyster, which tastes better than the Mediterranean congeners, because they grow under conditions of 34 ppm of water salinity, and the salinity of the Black Sea - 17 ppm. Therefore, my oyster turns out to be more tender than the European one and does not give off algae.

Through thorns

Before retirement, Sergei decided to open an oyster farm - an "underwater garden" as he calls it.

- It was a long-standing desire: after 55 to leave Moscow for the Crimea. I learned that oysters were bred in the Black Sea from a scientist I knew. Then he conducted studies of the water area: the depth is important - from 12 to 20 meters, the current is 1.5-2 m / s, the absence of industrial emissions into the water and the presence of phytoplankton, that is, food for oysters. Then he picked up guy wires, ropes, cages: if you choose them wrong, oysters in a storm can simply be ripped off and carried out to sea.

In 2005, Kulik signed a special commercial fisheries regime (one of the types of agreement on the lease of a water area) with the Glavrybvod of Ukraine for 10 years.

“After that, I established a plantation of steel ropes, arrays and buoys, and for two years I did nothing with it, but only watched whether the structure would withstand two winters: in winter there are especially strong storms. And when in 2008 there was a storm, and 11 ships were thrown ashore in Feodosiya Gulf, my plantation survived. And only then I decided to buy spat. Brought the first 500,000 oyster larvae from France and planted them. So in Ukraine, and now in Russia, the first oyster farm appeared.

- Do you often go to sea? - I am interested.

- As soon as possible, when not stormy.

- Everyday?

Until 2014, the farmer and his workers tended the oysters by hand: they themselves dived behind the cages, sorted and cleaned each of the thousands of oysters. Then Kulik bought a boat from the Italians: with a pump for cleaning the cages, a lifting mechanism and an installation for washing and sorting mussels.

By 2015, he had invested $ 2.5 million in his farm. The enterprise produced about 20,000 oysters and 20 tons of mussels per year.

- By that time, I figured that 235 million rubles could be used to arrange a coastal base, establish round-the-clock work in three shifts, expand from 5 to 20 hectares and, having increased volumes, start real import substitution - supplying oysters to Moscow, St. Petersburg and etc. But this would be possible only with state support.

Dreams of state support turned out in an unexpected way: Sergei called the state into his “underwater garden”.

Bidding and state security

- In February 2015, the period of validity of the special commercial fisheries regime for 5 hectares of water area expired, and I turned to the Federal Agency for Fishery with a proposal to extend the use agreement, says Kulik. - According to Part 9 of Art. 17.1 of the Federal Law "On Competition", the conclusion of a contract for a new term with a tenant who has duly fulfilled his duties is carried out without a tender and an auction. I worked, there were no complaints about me. But the answer of the Federal Agency for Fishery was startling.

Sergei took out a document from the folder signed by the Deputy Head of the Federal Agency for Fisheries Vasily Sokolov: “After the expiration of the regimes, special commercial fish farms (STF) must conclude an agreement for the use of a fish plot in accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of 15 May 2014 No. bidding procedure ".

- What bidding? - the farmer is indignant. - If in Russia a government decree contradicts federal legislation, it is not my fault. Moreover, the law in Russia has the highest legal force in relation to other legal acts, so be so kind as to renegotiate the contract!

Kulik cited this argument in his letters to the Federal Agency for Fishery until July 2015, until he found out: there are claims to its water area. It turned out that the Azov-Black Sea Territorial Administration of the Federal Agency for Fishery launched the procedure for determining fish-breeding sites in Katsiveli at the request of a certain LLC “Russian Black Sea Company“ Crimean Seafood ”, and later - appointed an auction for their redemption.

Novaya Gazeta made inquiries: LLC Russian Black Sea Company Crimean Seafood belongs to Dionisy Sevastyanov, brother-in-law of Yandex Vice President Robert Stubblebine. However, it was not possible to contact representatives of the company: there is no “contacts” section on the website of “Crimean Seafood”, and there was no company office at the registration address in Yalta.

Robert Stubblebine (far left) in the Old Believer church in Simferopol, bought out in 2015 from the city authorities. Photo: staroobrad.ru

The auction for the sale of the water area belonging to Kulik was supposed to take place on January 18, 2016, but in the course of preparation for it, another applicant appeared - the Federal Agency for Scientific Organizations (FANO), whose employees gave a weighty argument in their favor: in 1966 the Marine Hydrophysical Institute of Sevastopol gave the water area of \u200b\u200bKatsiveli has the status of a restricted area, prohibited for navigation.

In Ukraine, the institute issued a permit to Kulik to use the water area, and now, having passed into the subordination of FANO, it announced that it was undesirable for the oyster farm to stay in the "regime zone No. 197".

At the same time, the scientists decided to take away not only the water area, but also the coast of the village. And on the site of his "vegetable garden" "technological tests will be carried out, including in the interests of the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation."

A year later, oyster farms appeared in Sevastopol and Crimea, as well as in Primorye: the total production of this delicacy has increased more than seven times, from 30 to 216 tons. By the end of 2017, Russian farms have grown already 531 tons of oysters and almost 1, 2 thousand tons of mussels. Thus, in the three full years since the introduction of counter-sanctions, the production of mussels has increased 12.4 times, and oysters - 265 times.

Rosrybolovstvo clarified that it is only about mariculture, that is, breeding mollusks in artificial conditions.

New law and low base

The food embargo is not the only reason for the flourishing of Russian production of seafood, the Federal Agency for Fishery noted. The representative of the federal agency recalled that after the adoption of the so-called law on aquaculture in 2015, a large-scale distribution of new fish farming sites began. In addition, the legal and regulatory framework for aquaculture has been improved and subsidies have been provided to aquaculture development companies. These measures, together with the increased demand for Russian seafood, pushed investors to implement projects for growing shellfish, the Federal Agency for Fishery noted.

The sharp increase in production is primarily due to the low base effect, noted Alexander Fomin, vice president of the Association of Production and Trade Enterprises of the Fish Market (Fish Association). In 2017, Russia imported, according to the Federal Customs Service, almost 283 tons of oysters (fresh, chilled and frozen), which is 29% more than a year earlier, and 1.1 thousand tons of mussels (+ 4%). Oysters are imported to Russia mainly from Tunisia, New Zealand, South Korea, Morocco and Japan, mussels - from New Zealand, China, Chile and Tunisia.

Crimean granary

The most actively increasing the production of aqua farm in the Crimea, admitted in the Federal Agency for Fishery. According to the ministry, the peninsula has become the largest producer of seafood delicacies: at the end of last year, every second Russian mussel and two-thirds of all oysters were grown in Crimea.

In 2017, Crimean farms produced 39 tons of commercial oysters, 319 tons of oysters that did not reach marketable weight (40 g), and 604 tons of mussels, Andrey Dedyukhin, head of the fishing department of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Crimea, told RBC. Now, according to his information, 11 farms are engaged in the cultivation of mussels and oysters on the peninsula (the ministry's website has information on only eight enterprises).

The main volume of commercial oysters and mussels is produced by enterprises belonging to the Crimean Seafood Group, whose farms are located on Lake Donuzlav, Dedyukhin said. In 2017, the group, as its former executive director Vladimir Mazanov told RBC, produced 60 tons of mussels and about 700 thousand pieces of oysters, and in this it intends to significantly, up to 2 million pieces of oysters, increase production thanks to the previously imported spat (juveniles of mussels and oysters ). The company imports planting material for oysters from nurseries in France, since Russia does not have its own. The capacity of the mussel farm in Donuzlav will increase to 500-700 tons of mussels by the end of the year, according to Mazanov. The company does not disclose financial indicators.

In the first half of 2018, 11 tons of commercial oysters, 4 tons of oysters that did not reach the marketable weight and 213 tons of mussels have already been grown in Crimea, Dedyukhin said. The main harvest of shellfish will be harvested in autumn, but the Republican Ministry of Agriculture expects an increase of 5-10% compared to last year.

Expensive pleasure

So far, oysters and mussels remain a delicacy product and their main sales channel is the HoReCa segment (hotels, restaurants and cafes), as well as retail chains of the middle and high price segment, said Ilya Bereznyuk, managing partner of Agro and Food Communications. In his opinion, the volume of industrial production of shellfish can be increased tenfold, but for this it is necessary to solve the problem with the culture of consumption. “The Russian consumer, for example, still perceives shellfish as an ingredient for salads, and the peak of their sales falls on the pre-holiday period,” Bereznyuk complained.

Applications for the formation of the boundaries of new fish breeding grounds for growing oysters and mussels come quite often, Dedyukhin said. In total, according to him, 32 new fish breeding sites have been formed in Crimea since 2015, and tenders have already been held and contracts have been concluded for 12 of them. The products of the Crimean aqua farms are in demand among the local population, so at least half of the mussels and oysters produced remain in the Crimea, and the rest is sent mainly to Moscow and St. Petersburg, Dedyukhin added. The growth in consumption of Russian mussels and oysters was also confirmed by restaurateur Arkady Novikov, owner of Novikov Group (#Farsh burger chain, Bolshoi restaurant, Krispy Kreme coffee shops, Vokrug Sveta gastronomic market). “I don’t eat oysters at all, but the guests, if the price is good, they go with a bang,” Novikov admitted. The restaurateur called the price a disadvantage of Russian seafood: according to him, sometimes they are more expensive than imported ones. In the Nedalny Vostok restaurant owned by the Novikov Group, one oyster from Tunisia costs, as indicated on the institution's website, 350 rubles.

Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov / TASS

On average, the launch of one farm with specialized equipment for growing mussels with a capacity of up to 250 tons of finished marketable products can cost an investor 10-15 million rubles. In general, capital costs for a complex of three farms with a total output of up to 750 tons will amount to about 40 million rubles, according to Bereznyuk. According to him, the first harvest can be obtained in 2.5-3 years.

Notable Oyster Investors

In May 2016 the company "South Citadel" received plots for growing oysters and mussels near Gelendzhik. The plots are located along the coastline from the village of Divnomorskoye to Cape Idokopas, where the resort complex, known as "Putin's Palace", is located (a building with an area of \u200b\u200b17.7 thousand square meters on a land plot of 67.8 hectares), while the Kremlin has repeatedly denied the president's connection with him. In March 2011, businessman Alexander Ponomarenko named himself the owner of the complex (he takes 34th place in the last rating of Forbes magazine "200 richest businessmen of Russia" with a fortune of $ 3.4 billion): he then told Kommersant that he had bought the facility under construction worth $ 350 million from Nikolai Shamalov.

The only owner of the "South Citadel" as of May 2016 is its general director Alexei Vasilyuk. In November 2017, South Citadel LLC, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, ceased to exist, since it was transformed into South Citadel JSC. According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities for March 2017, the owner of the LLC was already Alexander Ponomarenko. There is no information on the shareholders of South Citadel JSC in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.

The production of mussels in the Krasnodar Territory is also a company associated with the family of ex-Minister of Agriculture Alexander Tkachev. In 2016 "Agrocomplex named after N.I. Tkachev " initiated the formation of a fish-breeding site in the Golubaya Bay area of \u200b\u200bthe Tuapse region, where the agricultural company planned to develop the production of mussels and oysters.

A Crimean businessman told the site what difficulties he faced when starting an oyster business on the peninsula

On 5 hectares of the Black Sea near the village of Katsiveli, seafood delicacies ripen in bunches - together with Crimea, Russia received an oyster-mussel farm, the first and only one since the revolution. Although, if the officials do not pay attention, we may lose this example of import substitution.

From socks to shellfish

“10 years ago I did not expect that Crimea would go to Russia, that sanctions would be introduced,” says the owner of the farm, Sergei Kulik. - But it turns out that then I got into the top ten. Now the phone is broken, customers and investors from all over the country are calling. It's just that I have always had a taste for innovative types of business.

After the restructuring, "Chuika" threw the former space engineer into various areas - from logging in the Tomsk province to milk processing in the Lipetsk region. In the mid-90s, it was Kulik, in collaboration with fashion designer Yudashkin, who sewed those same crimson jackets. Then I got carried away with the production of antimicrobial socks - such that after three weeks the socks do not smell. The traveler Fyodor Konyukhov was especially grateful for the development. But socks did not go into mass sale, although, as I recall, after similar innovations they started talking in Rusnano. But Kulik by that time was already far away and at the mercy of another idea.

“I decided long ago that after 50 I would move from Moscow to Crimea to meet old age,” he says. - I came to Katsiveli, built a hotel complex here, but it was somehow boring. I thought that if I also have my own seafood, then I will definitely be on horseback.

Kulik learned that even before the revolution, there were dozens of oyster farms in the Crimea, supplying products to the tsar's table and to Europe. The Crimean oyster was prized for its unique sweetness.

- In Europe, oysters are salty, they give away fish, that's why they are watered with lemon. And in the Black Sea the salinity is lower - 17–18 ppm, so our oyster is sweet, tender, and you can just drink it with a glass of wine.

There was no glass for me in the open sea, but the aqua farmer treated me to a fresh oyster. It turned out that he was boasting for a reason - no salt and fishy aftertaste. Although the oysters that Kulik grows are not from the Black Sea. "Native" mollusks were almost completely eaten by another marine inhabitant - rapan (by the way, it is still the main enemy of the aqua farmer).

“Rapan was brought here in the 1940s on the bottoms of ships, and it ate almost all of the Black Sea oyster,” says Kulik. - Therefore, I had to understand whether the Pacific oyster from Europe will take root here. The experts said it was possible.

Fighting mortality

And then the titanic work began to return the oyster to the Crimea. The first two years were spent on paperwork and preparation of the water area.

“In France, oysters are bred in calm lagoons with good ecology,” says Kulik. - And we have all the bays dirty and constantly storms. It was necessary to make an anti-storm system. I ordered steel ropes from Russia, cast 5-ton anchors with suction cups in Sevastopol, bought buoys and oyster cages from Italy, brought a floating crane here - it took me $ 5,000 a day to rent it.

19 rope lines with buoys and oyster cages suspended at a depth of two meters appeared 300 meters from the shore. But Kulik was in no hurry to settle them.

Bunches of mussels ripen on steel ropes / author

“It was necessary to check the suitability of the system,” he explains. - In 2008, there was a storm: 11 ships were thrown ashore, two mussel plantations near Sevastopol were killed. And my system survived. And even the wild mussel that grew on the ropes was preserved.

In 2009, Kulik went to Europe for spat. But out of the first 500 thousand fry oysters, which cost 20 thousand euros, 90% ingloriously died.

- We landed them wrong, we could not stand the temperature, - complains Sergei Vasilyevich.

For the next trips, he took another 500 thousand spat from Italy and France. About 70 thousand have survived to this day.

“Even with the right technology, to grow a million oysters, you need to buy 4–5,” explains the aqua farmer.

The oyster grows to marketable condition for 2-3 years, and during this time it faces a lot of dangers. First, 10–30% die during transportation. Another 30% are eaten by rapan.

- Once a year, when he spawns, we completely sort out all the cages. In addition, the oyster must be seated as it grows, otherwise it is cramped, and the cages sink to the bottom under the weight, and the rapan is waiting there again, ”says Sergei Kulik. - Plus, once every three months, the cages must be cleaned of algae: if they overgrow, the oyster will not have enough plankton to feed. In general, it is like hilling the beds, only in the sea "garden".

Until recently, the "vegetable garden" was plowed by hand. With the help of four workers, including Kulik himself, another 6-8 people were hired for the season. Aqua farmers themselves dived behind the heavy cages, hand-scraping each of the thousands of oysters. The growing mussels were also sorted. But last year it got better - Kulik bought a used boat from an Italian oyster production. It has a cage cleaning pump, a lifting mechanism and a mussel washing and sorting unit.

Star thorns

To establish industrial production and uninterrupted supplies, Kulik needs to introduce another innovation - a "mini-sea on land" of 50 interconnecting pools with running seawater for overexposing shellfish.

“Because of the storms, we only have 120 working days. There are a lot of orders, but we cannot go out to sea. Having a coastal base, I will be able to plant the necessary part of oysters and mussels there, grow them in the pools and sell them constantly, ”explains Kulik.

For the base, he rented 375 sq. meters of the coast. In addition to the pools, there will be a crane for lifting products and a boat (due to storms, it is also impossible to keep it near the coast at all times). Kulik has already bought the crane for 100 thousand dollars and almost delivered it. But the neighbors interfered - the local observatory, whose radio telescope has been spinning over the beach for a long time. Astronomers feared that the oyster crane would block their communication channel with space.

- The director turned both local residents and hotel owners against me. They say that tourists will stop coming to you, and the crane will fall on the tourists. Although this is impossible, - assures Kulik.

In his opinion, astronomers pursue unscientific interests: allegedly, the observatory's management also makes money on tourists, renting them beach houses on their territory. The conflict between the sky and the sea has been going on since the times of Ukraine.

“They wrote to the SBU, last spring they tried to put pressure on my landlord through the prosecutor’s office,” says Kulik. - I also notified local and federal authorities and filed a lawsuit. Before, I had to close my business because of officials. And if within a month I am not allowed to establish this production to the end, I will close it too.

Kulik has invested $ 2.5 million in his farm for 8 years, he does not even announce the amount of his debts and loans. And although the turnover has doubled over the past year, the income from the sea garden is negligible.

- Last year I shipped 20 thousand pieces of oysters, 180 rubles apiece. And another 20 tons of mussels, 120 rubles each. per kilo. But this is minuscule, - says Kulik. - And I counted: 235 million rubles could be used to arrange a coastal base, arrange round-the-clock work in three shifts and expand from 5 to 20 hectares. But this is only possible with government support.

But if farmers on land cannot wait for it, what can we say about a sea gardener. After the revolution, the new government was too busy to save oyster production. But now the political moment is the most favorable. One person in his field has already made the dreams of officials about import substitution a reality. Instead of empty talk about a bright future, you can seize on an almost finished achievement - only so as not to ruin it.

/ By the way

• In 1871, the First Russian Oyster Society appeared in Crimea, and five aqua farms operated in one Sevastopol Bay.
• By 1917, Russia supplied Europe with up to 12 million Black Sea oysters annually.
• In 2013, the Russian Federation imported 4.5 million oysters, about 300 thousand more "wild" shellfish were harvested in Sakhalin. Against the background of the embargo, Rosrybolovstvo reported that by 2017, the Kuban and Crimean producers will provide complete import substitution of oysters. Which is a priori impossible without importing spat. Only in June, the Ministry of Agriculture announced the lifting of sanctions on the import of juvenile oysters (as before for salmon fry).

Rosrybolovstvo promises that the marine farms of the Krasnodar Territory and Crimea will be able to provide complete import substitution of oysters by 2017. According to the forecasts of officials, next year the demand for the gourmet delicacy will be closed by 40% thanks to domestic production. However, not everything is so cloudless. Today, oysters are grown in the Black Sea, the larvae of which are imported from the European Union - mainly from Spain and France, where there are specialized nurseries. Rather, they are no longer imported, since the planting material from which the expensive product grows fell under the Russian food embargo introduced in 2014, along with the oysters themselves.

Now farmers (only four farms are engaged in the cultivation of oysters on the Black Sea coast - three in the Krasnodar Territory and one in the Crimea) are asking the government to lift the ban on the import of spat, otherwise there can be no talk of any millions of oysters promised by the Federal Agency for Fishery. “I wrote a letter to Rosrybolovstvo to lift the embargo on oyster spat, as they did on sturgeon,” says Sergey Kulik, director of the only mussel-oyster farm in Crimea. - What will happen if this does not happen? Well, let's be honest, a Russian businessman will always find loopholes. We'll bring it through Tunisia, through Turkey, through Belarus, which doesn't even have a sea - what's the difference. " However, a businessman who is reviving oyster farming in Crimea hopes that it will not come to that. However, time is running out: for the 2017 harvest, you need to bring the spat no later than the beginning of summer.

Half of the oyster harvest dies at sea

Growing oysters in itself is fraught with many risks: spat may not survive a long flight, mollusks can die during storms, be eaten by rapa, shells are often injured when cleaning the cages in which oysters grow. In two years, while the seafood delicacy grows, up to 50% of the crop is lost; 30% of losses is already a good indicator by international standards.

Sergei Kulik's mussel-oyster farm is the only such production in Crimea. It took eight years and $ 2.5 million to turn five hectares of water area near the village of Katsiveli, near Koktebel, on the southern coast of Crimea, into an experimental farm. But capital investments, according to the businessman, still have no end in sight. Sergei plans to create a coastal base and expand the plantation to 20 hectares, which will cost another 3.5 million euros. The payback period for production is 5-6 years.

“For the industrial cultivation of mussels and oysters, three factors are needed: a plantation, a specialized floating craft and a coastal base. The base is needed in order to raise the boat (we have 120 workers a year, the rest are storms) and in order to lift the products, land them in jail. Jail is a kind of strategic reserve. Restaurants ask for regularity, you need to do shipments every day, but I can't go out to sea for 2-3 weeks because of storms. Therefore, it is necessary that there be 10 tons of mussels and 10 thousand oysters in prison, which are then sold within one or two months, and again a stock is made. But I cannot build a base and put a crane for lifting a boat and products, because in connection with the change of the peninsula of citizenship, the confusion with documents continues to this day and no one wants to make a decision on installing a crane and building a coastal base, ”the businessman complains.

Crimean oyster is sweeter than French, but more expensive

Until recently, the Crimean marine farmer did not have a specialized floating craft. Just this year, he brought back from Italy a used boat equipped for cleaning and sorting mussels and oysters, upgraded it and replaced the engine. Before that, for eight years, both the businessman himself and his employees (there are only four people on the staff) dived from a small boat behind every oyster cage. Once every three months, the cages were pulled ashore, where workers hand-picked the oysters, clearing them of algae, ooze and small mussels.

“The gardens are overgrown with grass. Both mussels and oysters feed on phytoplankton. And if the cage overgrows, it means that they are starving and it is hard for them to breathe, - the businessman explains. - Now, with the purchase of the boat, the work process has radically changed: we clean the cages using a marine pump. The boat can process up to two tons of products per hour. Now we have cleaned 400 kilograms of mussels in 40 minutes with smoke breaks - before it took a day. "

Largely because of the complexities of production, the price of the Crimean oyster "bites" - that is why it is sold not in dozens, as is customary abroad, but by the piece. The cost of one mollusk is 180 rubles, while in Europe they ask for about 10 euros per dozen (about 600 rubles). But Sergei Kulik assures that the money spent is worth the gastronomic pleasure received: “The Mediterranean oyster is saltier and tastes like mud and fish, but here it is sweet,” he says. - This is due to the fact that the density of water in the Black Sea is only 17 ppm, and in the Mediterranean - 38. It is not for nothing that earlier the Black Sea oysters were in great demand in Europe - before the revolution, Russia supplied about 12 million Black Sea oysters a year. It should be noted that most of these mollusks were grown in the Koktebel Bay, which was then literally dotted with oysters.

Restaurants are queuing up, but there is not enough food for everyone

The high price does not scare Russian restaurateurs either. As Sergei said, over the past three months, he received about 650 calls from restaurateurs in Moscow and St. Petersburg with requests for direct deliveries, however, the small Crimean farming has not yet been able to fully satisfy the demand: initially it was focused exclusively on the domestic regional market, and today, in order to start supplying oysters to other Russian regions, it is necessary to significantly expand the business. Further expansion, in turn, runs into embargoes and bureaucratic delays.

“The local market is colossally poor in seafood, sea culture in Crimea is in its infancy. I would like the laws on maritime culture to finally take effect. And, of course, it is necessary that there is government funding for small farming. Taking loans from banks for production, where it takes 2-3 years for the first profit to go, at 24% per annum is absurd. The third condition for development is that insurance companies must learn to insure the future harvest, as is done in Europe, ”says the Crimean oyster farmer about the most problematic moments. There is a catastrophic shortage of professional personnel on the Black Sea coast who are ready to work in marine farming. For example, to revive the population of the primordial Black Sea oysters, which were successfully grown in Crimea at the beginning of the twentieth century, an impressive staff of narrow biologists is needed, which today no one Crimean university graduates.

Sergei Kulik hopes that the embargo issue will be resolved by the end of May, and then the problem with permits for the construction of the coastal base. Otherwise, the businessman promises to officially announce the closure of the company through the media - without a base, even if all other problems are resolved, the further existence and development of the farm is impossible.

The material was prepared by the agency's journalist especially for Znak. com.