Russia may ban Japanese distant-water fishing in the South Kuril area in case Japan violates fishing rules again.
      
      The Russian side has notified a protest against the illegal crossing of Russian borders by Japanese vessels. On this base Yoshitaka Akimoto, the plenipotentiary minister at the Japanese embassy in Russia was called at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
      
      December 13 a Japanese fishing trawler was detained by Russian custom officers for illegally entering Russian territorial waters and poaching. Inspections revealed that only seven out of the 11 boats had permission to trawl in Russian waters.
      
      Confrontations over poaching between Russian authorities and Japanese fishing vessels are frequent in Russia's Pacific waters. Russia's State Fisheries Committee recently announced that Russia would launch a crackdown on illegal exports of crab and other bio-resources to Pacific Rim countries from the beginning of 2008.
      
      In 2006, a total of 80 fishing vessels made illegal catches in Russia worth over 900 million rubles ($36 million). In the last two years a total of 7 million tons of illegally-caught seafood, worth 230 million rubles ($9.2 million), has been seized in Russia's Bering and Okhotsk Seas.
      
      rian.ru
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