Russian Ship Off N.Z. Is Trawler

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30667, 5 February 1965, Page 12

Russian Ship Off N.Z. Is Trawler

(New Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, February 4.

A Soviet ship, the Acedemic Berg, which has been steaming up and down the coast off the Opotiki district in the last 12 days, has been identified as a stern ramp trawler.

An Opotiki private pilot, Mr N. Reeve, with Mr L. Carruthers as passenger, flew over the ship in a Cessna 150 aircraft on Monday. Mr Carruthers took photographs from a height of 800 feet, using a telephoto lens. He said a pile of fish was distinctly visible oh the deck. Both men had earlier seen trawl nets behind the boat

She has been sighted between Te Kaha and Ohiwa sometimes stationary at distances varying from one and a half miles to the horizon.

Mr N. Gwillam, skipper of the Gunner, of Opotiki, has seen trawl nets out from the Russian boat on several occasions. He has no doubt that it is a fishing factory vessel. In a radio-telephone message at 6.40 p.m. today Mr G. Walmsley, skipper of the Tauranga boat Sea Ranger, said the Russian boat was trawling in 30 fathoms off the mouth of the Motu river. The R.N.Z.A.F. maritime

reconnaissance support unit at Hobsonville has reported in the last 10 months 61 sighting of Japanese trawlers believed to be within New Zealand territorial waters, according to air sources here. The unit’s Sunderland fly-ing-boats have photographed the trawlers, and established their exact position from the shore by radar and triangulation.

Six of the sightings have been made this year. However, some of the total

involve the same trawlers sighted by different reconnaissance flights. Full details of the sightings have been reported to the Air and Marine Departments.

The Hobsonville Sunderlands do not deliberately search for Japanese trawlers within New Zealand waters. However, they began keeping a look-out on routine flights from April 1 last year after being asked to do so by the Maritime Department.