About 100 Chinese fishing boats suspected of poaching coral were headed back to the waters off the Ogasawara Islands on Friday morning after sheltering from a passing typhoon, a Japan Coast Guard spokesman said in Tokyo.
But about 100 boats apparently engaged in similar theft near the Izu Islands had dispersed as the typhoon approached, the spokesman said.
The coral poachers have highlighted the nation's inability to deal with such a broad incursion at a time when the Coast Guard is deploying its assets off the Senkaku islets of the East China Sea.