By Yereth Rosen

Alaska Beacon

The U.S. Coast Guard said it has seized 5.4 metric tons of allegedly unreported pollock roe and discovered several significant fishing violations aboard one of the biggest factory trawlers operating in the Bering Sea off Alaska.

The enforcement action, announced by the Coast Guard on Monday, is against the Northern Eagle, a catcher-processor owned and operated by Seattle-based American Seafoods. The company disputes the allegation.

A team from the cutter Waesche boarded the Northern Eagle on March 26 when the trawler was about 15 nautical miles north of Dutch Harbor, the Coast Guard said in a statement. The action followed an alert from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office of Law Enforcement about discrepancies between the vessel’s production reports and electronic logbook. 

“The integrity of fisheries data is paramount for the sustainability of our nation’s living marine resources,” Captain Tyson Scofield, commanding officer of the Waesche, said in the Coast Guard statement. “This seizure highlights the Coast Guard’s commitment to enforcing federal law with our partner agencies to ensure a level playing field for all fishermen who follow the rules.”

Pollock roe is considered a delicacy in some Asian nations; Japan and Korea are the main markets for it.

The unreported roe aboard the Northern Eagle was worth $65,000, the Coast Guard said. 

The Coast Guard team remained with the Northern Eagle as it sailed to Dutch Harbor, and the team observed and documented the crew offloading 11,524 boxes of pollock roe, the statement said. That was 241 more boxes than what had been declared in the Northern Eagle’s log.

The investigation also uncovered evidence indicating that the Northern Eagle crew, in a previous voyage, had underreported about 12.4 metric tons of pollock roe worth an estimated $150,000, the Coast Guard said.

American Seafoods on Tuesday disputed the Coast Guard’s characterization of events and issued a statement “to correct the public record, address inaccurate narratives, and clarify the nature of this regulatory inquiry.”

The company said the issue is a simple paperwork discrepancy arising from different methodologies rather than deliberate misreporting. The discrepancy was the result of minor and routine differences between estimated daily numbers and final reconciled numbers, the company said in the statement.

“We strongly reject any narrative that portrays a discrepancy in daily estimated production as an intentional breach of conservation measures that protect our fishery,” Inge Andreassen, American Seafoods’ president, said in the statement. “There is no economic motive to report anything other than exactly what we produce.” 

American Seafoods is one of the major harvesters of Bering Sea pollock. The company has a fleet of seven vessels, five of which are engaged in the pollock fishery. The Northern Eagle, at 341 feet and with space for 143 crew members, is American Seafoods’ longest vessel, according to the company’s website.

Roe is collected from Bering Sea pollock in the early part of the year. The annual Bering Sea pollock harvest is divided into two parts. A winter-spring “A Season” is conducted in the first half the year, usually from January to April, and targets fish when they are spawning and the females are carrying eggs. A subsequent “B Season” starts in June and runs through the fall, usually resulting in a total harvest of higher quantity but focused more on fish fillets and products that are made from them.

• Yereth Rosen came to Alaska in 1987 to work for the Anchorage Times. She has been reporting on Alaska news ever since, covering stories ranging from oil spills to sled-dog races. She has reported for Reuters, for the Alaska Dispatch News, for Arctic Today and for other organizations. Alaska Beacon is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.