The Nation - News from Aug. 18, 1986

The Coast Guard spotted a Japanese fishing boat and forced the crew to throw back its crab catch from a section of the Bering Sea claimed by both the United States and the Soviet Union, officials said. The Hoku Maru carried Soviet observers on board and claimed that the Soviet Union had given it permission to fish there. The United States, however, does not recognize the Soviet claim to the waters 900 miles west of Anchorage, an area believed to be rich in oil and gas deposits. The two nations have different interpretations of the 1867 boundary formed when Russia sold Alaska to the United States. The Hoku Maru was in the same waters where two Soviet patrol boats chased and fired upon a Seattle fishing boat on Aug. 6.