The Nome Nugget

ANCHORAGE -- Charges that Japanese fishermen may be poaching salmon from the annual run as it rounds the Alaska Peninsula enroute to Bristol Bay were leveled by William S. Sutton, Sitka, fisherman and Alaska Native Brotherhood leader.

Sutton just returned from Bristol Bay, where he says the fishing was seriously depleted by the fact that hundreds of floating seine boats from Outside were operating.

He says that he further believes, after a conference with Bob Reeve, owner of Reeve Aleutian Airways, that poaching of the salmon as they headed for the Bay area on their traditional route just south and west of Cold Bay may have had something to do with it.

Reeve said he noticed a news report in which Japanese reported taking 60 tons of salmon from the convention area in the North Pacific Ocean.

"This salmon was either poached from American waters or taken from off the Aleutian Islands," he declared. "They are American fish and it is definitely proof of the adverse effects of Japanese fishing treaty."