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.

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.”

Criminal gangs are becoming a growing problem in Adelaide, Australia, but unlike most other gangs, these criminals are not fighting over drugs, precious stones or illegal firearms – they’re in it for the fish.

Despite this, the war on gangs launched by Adelaide authorities includes all the usual features; moonlight raids, fencing criminals, confiscation of secret stashes, and officials being seriously assaulted by criminals trying to evade the long arm of the law.

Thanks to a growing black market in restricted fish and shellfish, poachers can earn thousands of dollar per week along the windswept beaches and mangrove forests of South Australia. The 100 km piece of coastline running from Garden Island in the Port River Estuary to Bald Hills Beach, just south of Port Wakefield, seems to be especially popular among pilferers, with 108 reports of illegal fishing this year.

“This coastline is a reasonably inaccessible area, there are few roads and lots of thick mangrove scrub”, says PIRSA* Fisheries director Will Zacharin.

Often working in gangs of three, poachers build fishing platforms inside the thick mangrove forest and stash their nets and other equipment there.

Special joint operations are now carried out by police and PIRSA Fisheries to crack down on gangs taking undersized fish and selling fish of commercial quantities without a license. Fisheries are also working with interstate counterparts to investigate gangs trafficking abalone, crayfish and Murray cod. Sometimes, officers find more than just frutti di mare – one current prosecution for crayfish trafficking does for instance include the sale of and distribution of drugs.s

The officers, who work in pairs, are armed with capsicum spray for personal protection, but this isn’t always enough when facing poachers in possession of illegal firearms.

“There are incidents where we have seized illegally caught seafood and the offenders have also been in possession of illegal firearms, cash and drugs,” says Mr Zacharin. “They [the officers] are regularly threatened, sometimes verbally and some physically, and we have had incidents where officers have been manhandled which we report to police and resulted in
people charged with assault.”

According to Wildcatch Fisheries SA, the state’s commercial fishing body, black-market trade in fish and other marine creatures is a growing problem in the region.

”There’s a view among the industry that poaching is a growing issue – it’s definitely something over the last couple of years which is becoming more apparent,” says General manager Neil MacDonald.

In the Adelaide region, 11 poachers have been fined $315 each this year and 10 illegal nets have been confiscated, each being about 1 km long. Statewide, poaching investigations have resulted in 135 cautions and 57 fines.

* The Department of Primary Industries and Resources SA

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.