CG Cutter in Pacific Pursues Fish Piracy Case




"I would call this fishing piracy that is going on," Papp said during a hearing in Kodiak by the U.S. Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.

"They put eight miles of net out there and collect everything that flows through it," he said, possibly picking up migratory stocks destined for Alaska waters.


"We have something called the Maritime Operational Threat Response organization, which works across State and Justice and other departments - and we've come to a national objective of seizing this, what amounts to, we found out now, is a stateless vessel," he said.


"As a fallback, we can bring it back to the United States for prosecution as well," he said.


"I hope we're filing charges -- not just against the men operating the ship, but the buyers of these fish, and tracking it down to the networks that are funding these kinds of illegal operations," Landrieu said.



"Driftnets don't differentiate, don't select very well what they catch," he said by phone from Silver Spring, Md. "Anything that swims into them has a pretty good possibility of getting tangled up. So they were catching marine mammals and seabirds and sharks -- anything under the sun, including the target species, which back in those days was either tuna or salmon, depending on the mesh size."


"That's the way a lot of the sharks and marine mammals and seabirds used to get caught, just twisting around in the net."


"It's still a concern, but at least the numbers are a lot less than they used to be, and it seems like they're using smaller nets," he said. That may be because they're easier to pick up and run with, too. You don't just pick up a 30-mile net very easily."

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