Saury fishing boat taken by Russian border guard

October 9, 2017

TOKYO- A Japanese saury fishing boat was inspected by the Russian border guard service while operating off the northernmost Japan prefecture of Hokkaido and taken to one of the four Russian-controlled islands at the center of the two countries' longstanding territorial row, it was learned Sunday.

According to officials of Japan's Fisheries Agency and a saury fishing cooperative in Tokyo, the on-site inspection of the No. 63 Fukuju Maru was conducted on Thursday when it was operating at a point some 320 kilometers southeast of the city of Nemuro in the eastern part of Hokkaido.

The 199-ton fishing boat, carrying 17 crew members, was taken to Furukamappu, or Yuzhno-Kurilsk in Russian, on the island of Kunashiri by the border guard service by Friday, and further inspections were carried out on the ship until Saturday morning, the officials said.

While the No. 63 Fukuju Maru, from the Hokkaido town of Akkeshi, was operating in accordance with a Japan-Russian fishery pact, the Russian side suspects that there may be gaps between saury catch amounts recorded in the ship's daily logs and its actual catch amounts, according to the officials.

The Japanese government agency was informed of the incident through the cooperative around 7:20 p.m. Thursday (10:20 a.m. GMT).

The crew members remain on board the ship and can use radio communication. There has been no information on health problems among them, the officials said.

Kunashiri and the other three northwestern Pacific islands, located off Hokkaido, were seized by the former Soviet Union from Japan at the end of World War II. Jiji Press