Thieves made off with 15 moi (a type of featherfin) from a display tank situated at the Waikiki Aquarium this past weekend.

They forced their way into the aquarium after it had shut its doors for the day, and made off with 15 of the 21 fish in an outdoor tank, sometime between Friday evening and Saturday morning, officials at the aquarium stated.

They made their way over a chain-link fence, cut out an opening in the netting of the tank, and then proceeded to abduct the fish using their own net, officials at the Waikiki Aquarium reported.

“It looks like they threw the moi out, they lay on the ground there and they put them in the bag,” Director of the Waikiki Aquarium, Andrew Rossiter, explained. “There were scales and blood there. There were two dead moi left there in the morning that they missed.”

Workers at the aquarium found the two deceased moi left unceremoniously on the ground in front of the tank.

The estimated value of the stolen fish is around $1,500, though who knows what someone will pay for them on the black market.

Even though the fish were stolen, Rossiter feels the need to implore that these particular fish are not fit for human consumption, as they were prepped for breeding and thus contain some hormones and chemicals which make a fairly unappetizing cocktail.

“I would guess that they’ve been treated probably with hormones and probably with medication because they’re adult fish and they were for breeding,” he said.

One wonders why not take all the fish? And also.. What the heck are they going to do with them?

Herring catch

Six skippers are facing unlimited fines and confiscation orders to the tune of millions of pounds after admitting they breached fishing quotas.

Six trawlermen from Shetland are facing the music for reeling in an astounding 15 million GPB worth of herring and mackerel, cheating the strict quotas in place which are designed to help depletion of fish stocks.

The six skippers, hailing from Lerwick, admitted to making false declarations about the true hauls they brought in after over 200 trips between January 2002 and March 2005, which deliberately breached annual fishing quotas of their own.

The conviction came down, after an exhaustive investigation by the Scottish fisheries protection agency and police which also led to guilty pleas from the fish wholesalers Shetland Catch Ltd. For cooking their fish books, and falsifying reports about the size of their catches.

This particular case is one of the biggest on record involving what are known as “black landings”. Black landings is the practice of illegally catching and reeling more fish than what quotas allow for.

Black landings have all but died out, however director of operations with Scotland’s prosecution authority, Scott Pattison, has commented that there were also similar investigations still ongoing.

“This is not a victimless crime. The consequences of overfishing on this scale are far-reaching and the impact on fish stocks and the marine environment is potentially devastating,” he said. “The legislation is to protect the marine environment for the good of all and to safeguard the fishing industry.” he said.

A married couple based in Florida Keys have been sentenced to prison for lobster poaching and will have to pay 1.1 million USD to restore the marine sanctuary in which they carried out their illegal activities.

The husband was sentenced to 30 months in prison since he was he was deemed to be the ringleader while his wife got away with 7 months in prison and 7 months of house arrest. They will also forfeit three vessels and three vehicles. In a parallel civil action, the couple was ordered to pay $1.1 million toward the restoration of coral and sea grasses in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

The couple was indicted last year on a conspiracy charge together with four other lobster-poachers. The six were arrested on the first day of the lobster season after federal agents caught them using hut-like ”casitas” to illegally harvest spiny lobsters from the sanctuary.

In the government’s probe, dubbed Operation Freezer Burn, agents found that the poaching – which had been carried out for two days – had resulted in 1,187 spiny lobsters being caught and stored in freezers at the couple’s home. According to the investigation, the retail market value for such a catch is $21,662 USD.

The couple and three others pleaded guilty, while one defendant was convicted at trial. The couple is expected to raise the money by selling their Cudjoe Key home and another property on Little Torch Key.

Twelve thefts of exotic fish and pond equipment have been reported over a three-week period across Hull, East Yorks.

Humberside Police Community Support Officer Sam Gregory said all the evidence suggests the culprits are using the Internet to seek out their targets.

A picture of a kohaku Koi carp in a pond Copyright www.jjphoto.dk

“Google shows what is in your garden and you can see people’s ponds“, Gregory explained.

“One of the properties targeted has an eight foot fence and is set back from the road. The pond is in the corner and can’t be seen. Unless you were standing right next to the wall, you wouldn’t be able to hear the running water.”

In association with one of the thefts, where four small koi carps and some expensive lilies were taken, a neighbour report seeing two young men with a bike with a box on it and a big black net.

“Criminals could use maps, phones and getaway cars but no one would argue that these technologies are responsible for the crime itself, that responsibility lies with the perpetrator”, a Google spokesperson said, adding that Google is just one of several providers of detailed satellite images.

1.2 million tonnes of coral may have been illegally extracted from reefs located near Malaysia’s protected Semporna Islands Park.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjum has formed a committee that will investigate the allegations made by former state Social Services Minister Datuk Kong Hong Ming.

According to the former minister, corals have been extracted for 10 years by a certain group under the pretext of dredging sea sand. The corals have then been ground up and the powder sold to medical and pharmaceutical companies to be used for bone surgery, dentistry and drugs. Kong Hong Ming also said that he has visited an area in Tawau where 1,000 tonnes of corals were stored and that all corals were moved two days after his visit.

Manjum has now given the committee, headed by his minister Deputy Permanent

Secretary William Bayo, three weeks to wrap up its investigation.

“This is a very serious matter. I do not want to prejudice the probe by saying any more about it,” Masidi said Thursday.

Semporna Islands Park, also known as the Tun Sakaran Marine Park, is home to one of the nation’s prime coral reefs and the surrounding area is also very rich in biodiversity.

300,000 pounds of rock has been stolen from the bottom of the ocean near Alligator Light and Islamorada off the coast of Florida.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office wish to hear from anyone who may have seen a boat harvesting the material from the site. If you have any information about this case, please contact FWC, the

Sheriff’s Office or call the Crime Stoppers of the Florida Keys at (800) 346-TIPS. You can also leave an anonymous tip at https://www.tipsubmit.com/.

The stolen rocks belong to Neal Novak, 51, a Miami aquarist who leases the quarter-acre site inshore of Alligator Reef from the federal government to cultivate live rock for the aquarium trade. Unfortunately, Novak hasn’t visited his farm in a year so it is hard to know when the theft took place.

Live rock consists of dead coral rock or quarried rock colonized by a profusion of marine species. Anything from tiny bacteria to large sponges can find a home in and on this type of “living” rock, and rocks covered in colourful coralline algae are especially coveted. Saltwater aquarists use live rock to make their aquariums look more beautiful, make the ecosystem more balanced, and help keep the water quality up in the tank. Live rocks are often colonized by scavenging species that will take care of any left-over food in the aquarium before it gets a chance to foul the water. According to Novak, the wholesale price for quality live rock in Florida is about $3 per pound.

Since the harvest of live rock from the wild can hurt marine environments, Florida banned it in the 1990s and state and federal governments decided to lease barren sea-bottom sites to people interested in aqua-culturing live rock for the aquarium trade.

Novak created his live rock farm by purchasing rock from quarries in south Miami-Dade County and ferrying them to his farm where the rocks have been resting in roughly 20 feet (6 metre) of water until someone took them. The rock pile, which was designated by GPS coordinates, has most likely not been moved by natural forces, because no hurricanes have been reported from the area since 2005 and a second stone pile with immature live rock was left largely intact.

With a wholesale price of $3 per pound, 300,000 pounds of rock can naturally give a tidy little profit for unscrupulous boulder thieves.

“They stole my livelihood,” Novak said. “This is devastating to my whole family. It cost me almost $150,000 to put the rock down and start the business. I spent my life savings to make this work. We could be looking at bankruptcy.”

Bottle nosed dolphins living along the coast of Florida are getting used to supplement their diet by snatching bait from fishing lines or circle recreational anglers practising catch-and-release. Some dolphins have even made a habit out of routinely approaching humans to beg for food.

Scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service have now been able to show that this behaviour is spread down through generations of dolphins.

“We are able to document lineage, from grandmother to mother to calf, all following fishing boats and taking thrown-back fish,” says Jessica Powell, a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist.

Dolphins begging for food might be an endearing sight, but approaching humans in this fashion means taking a great risk. In 2006, three dead Sarasota Bay dolphins turned out to have fishing lures stuck inside them.

“Whenever animals become reliant on humans for food, it puts them at jeopardy,” says Dr. Randy Wells, director of dolphin research at Sarasota’s Mote Marine Laboratory. “If they are coming to boats or piers to get fish, they are swimming through a maze of lines, hooks and lures and those lines are designed to be invisible under water.”

Some dolphins do however seem to have figure out how to stay clear of harms way. A bottlenose dolphin nicknamed “Beggar” has been soliciting free meals in a narrow stretch of Intracoastal Waterway near Nokomis Beach since he was a juvenile 20 years ago. Despite routinely swimming just inches from boat propellers, the skin of Beggar’s 8 feet long body is free of major scars. Hopefully, the same is true for the inside of his 400 pound body.

As if the menace of razor sharp propeller blades, invisible fishing lines and jagged double hooks weren’t enough, bottlenose dolphins also stand the risk of encountering anglers who may not appreciate having their bait or catch snatched away by a hungry cetacean. A commercial fisherman out of Panama City, Florida has been sentenced to two years in prison after throwing pipe bombs at dolphins trying to steal his catch. Off Panama City, tour operators have been feeding dolphins for years to assure their presence at the popular “swim-with-the-dolphins” tours.

Feeding the Florida dolphins is illegal under both state and federal law, with federal law banning wild dolphin feeding in the early 1990s. Feeding wild dolphins can also be dangerous and the abovementioned “Beggar” dolphin has for instance sent dozens of overfriendly patters to the hospital for stitches and antibiotics.

Hand-feeding aside, a severe red tide in 2005 seems to have made the habit of interacting with humans for food much more widespread than before among the Florida dolphins. The red tide wiped out 75-95 percent of the dolphin’s usual prey fish and the hungry dolphins eventually realised that they could fill their bellies by picking bait fish off fishing lines.

“We suspect that the dolphins were
hungry,” Wells explains. “Their main prey
base was gone. Seeing a fresh pin fish
dangling from a line might look pretty
good to them. And once they learned
that anglers are a source of food, they
don’t forget that very quickly.”

American fishing captain Linda Greenlaw, best known for her depiction in the book “The Perfect Storm” and the film on which it was based, has been convicted of illegally entering and fishing in Canadian waters.

Greenlaw and her boat the Sea Hawk was spotted by a Canadian fisheries patrol plane last September, with fishing lines running five miles (roughly eight kilometres) into Canadian waters.

According to Greenlaw, she had mistakenly entered Canadian waters without realising it while searching for swordfish.

“This line, which is drawn on a piece of paper, you can’t see it when you’re fishing and working on deck,” Greenlaw said outside the provincial court of St. John’s. “There’s no fence. There’s no blinking lights.”

Judge Joe Woodrow said he believed that Greenlaw had made an honest mistake, but that it was a mistake a reasonable skipper would not have made, because she should have checked her GPS equipment. Greenlaw was therefore convicted on counts of illegally entering Canadian waters and illegally fishing there.

The Crown wants Greenlaw to be fined $50,000, while her lawyer is recommending half of that amount.

Greenlaw provided key information about a fatal 1991 storm in the Atlantic for the book “The Perfect Storm” by journalist Sebastian Junger. When the book was turned into a movie starring George Cloney and Mark Wahlberg, Greenlaw was portrayed by actor Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio.

A six-month long investigation by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) has led to the arrest of seven adults and one juvenile in Tampa. The arrested persons are believed to have been involved in various illegal activates concerning marine life, including catching protected sharks, sea horses, peppermint shrimp and bay scallops in Floridian waters, and exporting illegally obtained marine life to Europe. They are also suspected of having sold bait fish and bait shrimp as food for human consumption.

According to the FWC, the ring is believed to have operated for at least five years before attracting the attention of FWC. The ring lost a lot of animals due to poor maintenance, but the FWC still believes the group managed to sell $600,000 worth of peppermint shrimp alone.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission came into existence on July 1, 1999. The Investigations Section of the commission conducts both overt (uniform) and covert (plainclothes) investigations, and one of their tasks is to target hard-core commercial violators by conducting long-term undercover investigations. In 2003, the Investigations Section made 554 arrests/warnings and seized 130 illegally possessed specimens of fish and wildlife including a cougar, tigers, leopards, primates, exotic deer, venomous reptiles, protected birds and exotic aquatic species.