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<\/p>\nAn illegal foreign fishing vessel and nine men have been intercepted by Australian Border Force (ABF) off the far northern coast of Queensland, according to eyewitness reports.<\/p>\n
Rusty Tully, who runs a pearl farm on Turtle Head Island about 30 kilometres east of Bamaga, said he saw the vessel being towed by the ABF about 9am this morning.<\/p>\n
Mr Tully said he had alerted the ABF on Monday evening after he and his wife, Bronwyn Tully, spotted a group of men walking in the remote area through mangroves near Escape River, more than 1,000km north of Cairns.<\/p>\n
“The [ABF officers] came in and I showed them on Google Earth where I suspected they (the men) might be,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They’ve headed over there and 30 minutes later, they’ve pulled out this big, horrible wooden boat that you wouldn’t be able to sell in Australia.<\/p>\n
“It was quite professional \u2026 they’ve got a job to do and they did it well.”<\/p>\n
Rusty Tully says he reported the illegal foreign fishing vessel to the ABF last night. (Supplied: Rusty Tully)<\/p>\n
The ABF would not confirm the ABC’s enquiries about the interception including how many fishers were detained or the contents of the boat.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson said the ABF was undertaking operational activity as part of Operation Broadstaff and it was inappropriate to comment further on an ongoing operation.<\/p>\n
Boat could be destroyed<\/p>\n
The federal assistant minister responsible for the agency, Julian Hill, said foreign fishers entering Australian waters illegally risk losing their boats.<\/p>\n
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Mr Hill made a two-day trip to the region last week as part of an ongoing response to an influx of illegal foreign fishing boats.<\/p>\n
“We’ve already destroyed six out of the 15 boats intercepted [since January] and we leave it to the Australian Border Force, case-by-case, to determine the best response,” he said.<\/p>\n
“If you destroy a boat, you’ve then got to deal with the crew and the equipment.<\/p>\n
“It depends on the type of boat, it depends on the operating environment. They’re judgements for Border Force to make.”<\/p>\n
Sunken foreign boats to be salvaged<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) said two illegal foreign fishing vessels found sunken in far north Queensland waters should be salvaged within the next fortnight.<\/p>\n
AFMA said along with Parks Australia, it would undertake the recovery of a boat found off Masig in the Torres Strait and another near Crab Island, in the Northern Peninsula Area.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
An abandoned illegal foreign fishing vessel before and after it washed up on Crab Island off the far north Queensland coast in early February.\u00a0 (Supplied: David Kempton)<\/p>\n
Masig traditional owner Simon Naawi has cautiously welcomed the news.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but when we see it retrieved from that reef, we’ll be most happy,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr Naawi believes the boat sank about a fortnight ago and said its removal, along with its large ghost net, was a matter of urgency to protect the marine life his people rely on.<\/p>\n
“Our bread and butter within this vicinity are our surrounding reefs,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They are like a garden to us. That vessel sitting there, it needs to be salvaged ASAP.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An illegal foreign fishing vessel and nine men have been intercepted by Australian Border Force (ABF) off the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,86235,75,258165,128,258166],"class_list":["post-516643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-border-force","tag-environment","tag-foreign-fishing-vessels","tag-science","tag-turtle-head-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}