MURMANSK, January 10. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian sailors from the trawler “Oleg Naidyonov”, which has been detained by Senegal, can maintain contacts with relatives, managing director of the Fenix ship owner company Yuri Parshev told Itar-Tass on Friday.

The trawler has a broadband plan in the Internet, Parshev said.

“There are no online sessions for sailors and their relatives because they actively communicate with the use of social networks,” he said.

The ship owner has regular sessions with the trawler’s captain: they have started the sessions since the second day when the ship stay in Dakar. The Russian Federal Fisheries Agency also communicates with the trawler, Parshev said.

Earlier, a spokesman to the ship owner told Itar-Tass that even when the trawler had been seized by Senegalese mariners the Russian crew had an opportunity to inform on the situation.

No one has been allowed to leave the trawler. Passports and other documents have not been returned to Russian sailors.

The trawler Oleg Naidyonov was detained off Guinea Bissau on January 4 for suspected illegal fishing, Lieutenant-Colonel Adama Diop, from the public relations office at the Senegalese Army, said last week.

There were 82 persons aboard the ship — 62 Russians and 20 citizens of Guinea Bissau. The trawler was procuring fish off that African country under an inter-governmental agreement, which requires Russian sailors to take locals aboard for training and work.

The trawler belongs to the closed joint stock company Feniks registered in Murmansk, northern Russia. The company said every idle day of the ship in Dakar would cost it one million rubles. “This is an approximate amount and it may increase depending on the time and terms of demurrage,” Parshev, told Itar-Tass.

“The trawler has been operating in this region for a long time and took on a new Russian crew in Dakar on December 22 — 62 Russian citizens, mainly residents of the Murmansk Region. The ship entered and left the port unhindered,” he said.

Parshev noted, however, that the Senegalese authorities had repeatedly accused Russian ships of breaching fishing rules and imposed fines upon them, including the Oleg Naidyonov.

Its owner, senior officials of the Federal Fisheries Agency, the Russian Foreign Ministry, Defense Ministry, Emergencies Ministry and other relevant organizations have been notified about the incident.

The Oleg Naidyonov is a large factory trawler, 120 meters long. It was built in Germany in 1989 and received its current name in 2005 in honor of Murmansk’s first mayor. Prior to that, its name was Leonid Galchenko.