SEAFOOD.COM NEWS (Kodiak Daily Mirror) by Sam Friedman — February 6, 2014 — This year’s spike in foreign fishing incursions is based on better detection, not increased foreign fishing activity, says deputy chief of enforcement for the Coast Guard’s 17th District.
In 2013 the Coast Guard documented 30 incursions into U.S. waters by foreign vessels in the Alaska area. More than half were by one South Korean trawler. The number is up from 10 total incursions in 2012. Both years are well beyond the three previous years which all had three or fewer cases. The numbers come from the Coast Guard’s year in review presentation this week at the North Pacific Fishery Management Council in Seattle.
But the numbers do not mean more foreign boats are spilling into U.S. waters, said Cmdr. Chris Barrows, the deputy chief of enforcement for the 17th Coast Guard District.
“I think we’re detecting what’s going on better,” he told the Daily Mirror.
“We think the level of activity is about the same as previous years.”
The worst offender this year was the South Korean stern trawler the Joon Sung Ho. Unlike the U.S., the Russians allow some third-party nations to fish within their aquatic territory. Sixteen times this year the Joon Sung Ho crossed into U.S. waters northwest of the Pribilof Islands, according to the Coast Guard. Barrows said the behavior was likely based on a misunderstanding about the location of the maritime boundary, not a deliberate attempt to fish U.S. waters.
The boat didn’t go very deep into U.S. waters. It was met by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley. The Joon Sung Ho skipper was given the correct boundary coordinates and he did not re-offend. The Russian border patrol also gave the Joon Sung Ho a stern warning about incurring, Barrows said.
“We strongly think he (the skipper) had the wrong coordinates (for the border),” Barrows said. “Once we gave him the right coordinates we never saw him have a problem on the line.”
The violations of the second-worst violator, the Russian-flagged General Troshev, followed a similar pattern as the Joon Sung Ho, according to Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Grant Devuyst. The Coast Guard said the General Troshev had seven incursion last year, but the vessel didn’t re-enter U.S. waters after Russian border patrol warned the skipper and the owner.
The United State’s exclusive economic zone extends 200 miles from shore in the open ocean. It is defined by treaty in the Bering Sea where Alaska territory and Siberia approach each other. Foreign fishing vessels, which once fished from within site of land in Kodiak, were bared from fishing within the economic zone by the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Act.
Barrows said the Coast Guard is more aware of foreign vessels in recent years because the Coast Guard is cooperating more with the Russian border patrol and because of better technology. Automatic information systems, an electronic tool for tracking seagoing vessels, have become much more common in the last few years, he said.
The increased number of incursions comes despite far fewer hours spent on patrols. In Alaska, the Coast Guard spent 393 hours patrolling the skies in 2013, a fraction of a 1997 high of 3,208 hours. The decreased patrols are related to federal budget cuts, Barrows said.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.