Three fishing companies that operate in Alaska have been fined about $275,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency for pollution violations stretching back to 2008. KUCB’s Lauren Rosenthal has more.

The EPA penalized Blue North Fisheries, the Fishing Company of Alaska, and Golden Fleece Incorporated for failing to monitor and record seafood waste discharges from four of their processing vessels.

Blue North Fisheries and Golden Fleece also admitted to letting their Clean Water Act permits lapse for some of their boats, which means they were illegally emitting waste for a time.

Processing vessels are allowed to dump their scraps of unwanted fish overboard, as long as they grind it up into small pieces as specified by the EPA first. They also have to keep tabs on the time and volume of those emissions -- and make sure they don’t contain too much metal.

The EPA didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Blue North Fisheries of Seattle agreed to pay almost $95,000 for seafood waste violations on two of their Bering Sea freezer longliners.

Kenny Down, the company's president, says they're not admitting to any excess pollution. Down declined to speak on tape. But he told KUCB that all of Blue North’s violations are tied to bad recordkeeping and missing paperwork over the span of a few years.

Down says the EPA is partially to blame because they went through ”a long period of non-enforcement."

Golden Fleece Incorporated, consists of one factory trawler called the Golden Fleece, which fishes in the Gulf of Alaska.

The company was fined $136,000 for dumping fish waste without a Clean Water Act permit for three years, among other violations.

William Bisbee owns Golden Fleece. He says Golden Fleece has gotten new permits, but that hasn’t made a difference in how much processing waste gets dumped overboard.

All that’s different is that the crew keeps a logbook and takes photographs of discharges, and sends water samples out to the EPA every quarter.

The Fishing Company of Alaska did not respond to a request for an interview. But the company agreed to pay $44,000 in fines for inadequate recordkeeping, and has now come in compliance with EPA standards.