June 25, 2018 — An Alaska-based U.S. Coast Guard cutter on Saturday detained a Chinese-flagged vessel on suspicion of illegal fishing using driftnets, the Coast Guard said in a news release Friday. Custody of the 164-foot fishing vessel, Run Da, has since been transferred to the Chinese government.
After a U.S. Coast Guard aircraft spotted the vessel last week, the crew on the 282-foot cutter Alex Haley responded. Both U.S. Coast Guard and Chinese Coast Guard members aboard the Alex Haley — which has its home port in Kodiak — boarded Run Da, where they found 80 tons of chum salmon and one ton of squid.
The Alex Haley and its 105 crew members are on a North Pacific multinational fisheries enforcement patrol. The crew detained the fishing vessel in international waters about 860 miles east of Hokkaido, Japan, for suspected illegal, unreported, unregulated fishing activity, the Coast Guard said.