U.S. cutter back
from fisheries patrol
The Coast Guard cutter Jarvis was due to arrive home in Honolulu today after completing a 70-day patrol.
The 378-foot cutter and its crew of 170 left Honolulu in early July to patrol the South and West Pacific.
However, they were diverted to the North Pacific to enforce a 1992 United Nations moratorium that no fishing vessels may use large-scale drift nets longer than one and a-half miles.
The Jarvis found eight fishing vessels engaged in illegal drift net activity, the Coast Guard said.
The enforcement activity was the first in the North Pacific since 2000.
The Coast Guard worked with Chinese fisheries enforcement to catch the drift net vessels.
While on patrol, the crew also found and freed a 40-foot sperm whale that had become entangled in a drift net and buoy line about 2,600 miles northwest of Hawaii.
