South Africa has intercepted four Chinese-flagged fishing vessels for unauthorised entry into its territorial waters, its fisheries minister said on Thursday.
Police and fishery control officers placed the vessels, owned by Shenzhen Shuiwan Pelagic Fisheries, under guard at the Port of Cape Town.
Authorities charged the masters of the vessels and imposed an administrative penalty of 400,000 rand ($24,118). The owner of the vessels paid the fine, and they departed South African waters.
"South Africa will not tolerate the unlawful use of its maritime zones," Forestry, Fisheries and Environment Minister Willie Aucamp said in a statement.
The vessels initially sought permission on February 23 to pass through South Africa's Exclusive Economic Zone under the right of "innocent passage", the statement said. They later applied for Off-Port Limits (OPL) authorisation without providing the required justification or documentation, a request that was rejected.
Further investigations revealed the vessels had already entered South African territorial waters while the OPL request was under consideration. They were detected within 12 nautical miles of the Kwazulu-Natal coast and later tracked along the Eastern Cape coastline.
"The vessels repeatedly switched their automatic identification system on and off, a violation of South African laws requiring foreign vessels to keep AIS active while transiting national waters," the fisheries ministry said.
(Reporting by Sfundo Parakozov Editing by Alexander Winning and Gareth Jones)