Faroese authorities boarded four French trawlers in a closed area east of the island of Fugløy and the two pair teams have been escorted to Kollafjørður.
Coastguard vessel Tjaldrið encountered the two pair teams fishing east of the Faroe Islands on Sunday and informed police that the four trawlers were being escorted in having been apprehended in an area that had been closed to fishing a few days earlier due to the volumes of small fish in the region.
The four trawlers docked in Kollafjørður on Sunday night. The skippers of two of the French trawlers, owned by Boulogne company Euronor, claim that they had not been informed of the closure and have declined to accept set penalties, so the case will go to court. The company’s legal representatives in the Faroes have already secured the necessary bond.
According to sources in the Faroes, the Faroese authorities had informed their French counterparts of the area closure, but the information did not reach the four trawlers until they had already been boarded.
The two pair teams had only just begun fishing and have only a small amount of fish on board.
