ROCKLAND (AP) – The captain of a Maine fishing boat and the vessel’s owner face $510,000 in fines for allegedly breaking federal commercial fishing reporting laws.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration alleges that Daniel Fill, 43, of Sedgwick, failed to report about 15 million pounds of herring that he caught in the Gulf of Maine from June to late August.

The herring fishery operates under a quota system, with each boat allocated a certain percentage of the overall catch, federal officials said. Boat captains are required to report their catches every week and to keep daily logs detailing catch information.

NOAA issued the fine last week, while also suspending Fill’s fishing license for two years. Fill is prohibited from holding any federal fishing permits during that time, said Mark Oswell, a NOAA spokesman in Silver Spring, Md.

Fill and the vessel’s owner, Glenn Robbins of Eliot, have 30 days to go before an administrative judge to appeal the punishment, negotiate a settlement or pay the fine.

Fill told the Bangor Daily News the amount of the fine is “crazy” and that he hopes to work out a settlement. He said he and Robbins would each be responsible for half the amount.

“I’ll be back on state aid,” he said.

Oswell said the fine was the largest in Maine for a herring fisherman in the seven years he has been with NOAA. Any fine of more than $100,000 is “pretty significant,” he said.

Law enforcement officials boarded Fill’s boat after someone in the fishing industry tipped them off, Oswell said. Upon boarding the Western Sea, they found that Fill hadn’t reported any catch for the entire season and didn’t have any daily log entries for the whole year.

Fill said he was late in reporting his catch because he was given the wrong number to call in his catch. But he said his daily log was nearly up to date.

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Information from: Bangor Daily News, http://www.bangornews.com

AP-ES-10-19-07 0850EDT