Russian frontiersmen detained 5 foreign crabbers

02.12.2010 Five foreign vessels were arrested at once in the Sea of Okhotsk for violation of Russian state border. It was found out during the inspection that all of the ships were involved in illegal crabbing within Russian territorial waters. About 300,000 red king crabs were saved thanks to the frontiersmen.

Shipmaster of fishing vessel Flower ignored the order to stop.

According to Andrei Orlov who heads the press service of Northwest Frontier Dept, "officers had to use arms to make the vessel stop. They held both cautionary and effective fire. The shipmaster kept on trying to shake off pursuers. We dispatched an aircraft to the incident site to stop the vessel; finally, the aircraft opened cautionary fire. The ship hove aback and let the inspectors get on board.

Normally, shipmasters of "crabbers" surrender at once, having noticed a patrol craft. But this time we had a bit of races. The reason for getaway was obvious – frontiersmen found 52,000 live crabs below the decks.

"We had to take part in a little pursuit. Our fast-speed ships make this procedure as shorter as possible", said Dmitry Shikhov, commanding officer of patrol ship Vorovsky.

Live crabs were found on the other ships, too. Cost of fresh crabs is several times higher than the end products.

According to Dmitry Shikhov, "now poaching crabbers are most active, because king crab is in special demand on the New Year's Eve at Japanese, Korean, and Chinese markets.

All those vessels conducted illegal crabbing under flags of Cambodia and Panama, although all crews consist of Russian sailors.

All 5 violator ships will be under arrest in the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski till the investigation is over. Totally, 40 ships have been detained since the beginning of 2010, eighteen of them are crabbers. Economic loss caused to the country is over RUR 140 mln. This number could be much higher, but thanks to effective work of Russian frontiersmen about 300,000 crabs were returned to native habitat.