VLADIVOSTOK. Sept 17 (Interfax-AVN) - The border guards of the Maritime Territory have completed the first stage of the Breeze 2007 special operation aimed to curb poaching activities in the region during the sturgeon migration.
"The first stage of the operation was mounted from June 16 to September 15 by the Far East regional boarder guard directorate of the Russian Federal Security Service with participation of the Federal Fishery Agency and special maritime inspection of Russia," Rear Admiral Mikhail Galochkin, the chief of the coast guard section at the Maritime Territory's boarder guard department.
Inspection teams inspected some 760 Russian and foreign fishing vessels during the first phase of the operation, detaining 14 of them, including 11 ones of North Korea.
As many as 57 ship captains, as well as physical and legal entities were fined for about 2.5 million rubles, with 7,800 crab and shrimp traps and 20 km of poaching nets seized, emplaced on salmon migration routes.
The operation will continue at the Far East and will not end until mid-October.