Impounded Vessel To Be Freed

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31774, 3 September 1968, Page 1

Impounded Vessel To Be Freed

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, September 2.

The Japanese fishing vessel, Kaiko Maru No. 25—mother ship of the fishing dory which was arrested on Thursday in New Zealand territorial waters —will be returned to its owner.

The Kaiko Maru is at present at Mangonui, where for several days it has been under guard by a Navy fisheries patrol vessel.

The dory, which was confiscated at ’the same time as the mother ship was impounded, will remain subject to a redemption charge of $lOOO and will be returned to the owners only on payment of the charge. Announcing this today, the Minister of Marine (Mr Scott) said the Government had decided that penalties sufficient for the magnitude of the offence by the mother ship had been imposed and the ship was to revert immediately to

its owners without further penalty. The dory was captured by a fisheries protection launch on Thursday within the threemile limit off Sugar Loaf Rock, north of the Bay of Islands. The master of the mother ship and the crewmen from the dory were convicted in the Whangarei Magistrate’s Court of offences under the Fisheries Amendment Act. Mr Scott said the fines imposed on the offenders total-

led $2lOO and with the loss of fishing time this was a fairly stiff penalty which should help to remind other fishing skippers and their crews of their responsibility to flsh only within the limits allowed to them. The fish taken from the dory and held as evidence for use in the Court hearing at Whangarei would remain forfeit to the Crown and would be given to a charitable institution, he said.