"Poland, like Germany and other European Union countries, is obliged to prevent priate fishing. The EU laws on this are clear," Greenpeace Poland spokeswoman Katarzyna Guzek said in a statement.

The Carmen trawler, which was surrounded with chains at its mooring in Swinoujscie port, on the Baltic Sea, for two hours on Thursday, "has a long history of involvement in pirate fishing together with its sister vessels, currently moored in the German port of Rostock," the statement said.

According to Greenpeace, the Carmen and its four sister vessels are on an EU blacklist of 15 pirate fishing trawlers.

The Carmen has repeatedly breached European regulations governing fishing in the Atlantic, Greenpeace said.

"It has to be assumed that if the vessels are allowed to leave these European ports they will continue their poaching," it warned.

The environmental group said pirate fishing costs the global fisheries industry up to 7.6 billion euros (8 billion dollars) a year. Pirate fishing boats that trawl for deep-sea fish catch up to 20 percent of the global catch of marine life from the ocean floor and damage the deep-sea environment, Greenpeace said.

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