Longliner Caught Fishing In Marine Monumentff

Coast Guard enforcement officers this week boarded a longline fishing boat caught fishing inside the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands National Marine Monument.

A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft from Barbers Point, during a routine surveillance mission, spotted the 53-foot vessel Astara, whose agent is listed in state business documents as the United Fishing Agency in Honolulu.

The Coast Guard said the boat was seen as it was beginning to haul in its longline gear four miles inside the monument boundary.

”This area has been closed to longlining for a decade and a half. We hope that they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Stephanie Fried, senior scientist with Environmental Defense.

Longlining within 50 miles of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands was prohibited even before the monument was created, she said. Monument regulations prohibit all commercial fishing, except bottomfishing by eight boats with federal permits.

The Coast Guard, in a news release yesterday, said the Kaua’i-based cutter Kittiwake carried a law enforcement team that boarded the Astara and gathered evidence, which will be transmitted for further action to the Office of Law Enforcement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.