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.

Sand tiger shark aka Grey nurse shark - Credit: Richard Ling

Left on the beach for dead. This is the extremely sad thing which happened to an 8 foot sand tiger shark at Carolina Beach the night before yesterday. WWAY found the shark dead and decaying in a maintenance yard today.

A 15 year old resident and his cohorts are claiming that the police told them to take the shark out of the water and leave it on the beach to die. The youngsters admonish that they wanted to save the poor thing, by pushing it back out into the water, but they did as they were told.

The sand tiger shark is a protected species, and as such it should not have been left to die out there on the beach. The shark was discovered at 11:30 PM Tuesday on Carolina Beach in front of the boardwalk. The local authorities called in a tow truck to remove the beast before any tourists arrived in the morning. Spectators could only watch in awe, as the shark swung from the back of the truck, taking its last breaths.

The shark was just unceremoniously dumped off in a maintenance yard, where later, someone decided to take its teeth as a souvenir. Evan Pye says that the local constabularies just sat back in their cruisers and watched the horrid scene unfold last night.

“They were just like, ‘Sons bring it up here.’ We’re like ‘Why? Why bring it up here?’ because we were trying to make it live. ‘No, you got to bring it up here. You got to bring it up here.’ We’re like ‘We’re not going to bring it up there,’ and they’re like, ‘Bring it up right now,’ and started yelling at us and stuff like that and telling us that they’re going to arrest us and stuff like that,” Pye explained.

The chief of police has made an apology, but it is not yet clear if the officers in question will be reprimanded for this horrid decision they made.

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

Eleven suspected abalone poachers have been arrested in northern California, officials said Friday.

Since the tide was unusually low in Mendocino County, California Department of Fish & Game wardens were aware of the increased risk of poaching activity and kept their eyes on the coast line, including the coral reefs that had become exposed as the water disappeared.

At about 6.15 a.m. on Wednesday wardens noticed suspicious divers exiting waters near Caspar, south of Fort Bragg. Fish & Game Lt. Kathy Ponting, who runs the special operations unit, said her team drove to a spot near the suspicious divers and began surveillance.

Unaware of the wardens’ presence, the divers collected abalone from the reef and placed them in tall grass near the beach.

“Then a large van pulled up near the dive area and we watched them load up a bunch of abalone in plastic bags into the van,” Ponting said. The divers went back to the sea, while wardens decided to follow the van. After pulling it over, they discovered 50 abalones inside.

Abalones can sell for up to $100 dollars, but collection is strictly regulated since these molluscs need many years to develop. It can take 12 years for a specimen to reach the legal size. With a California fishing license and an abalone stamp card you are allowed to fetch 24 specimens per year, but no more than three per day. It is also illegal to collect them for sale, and anyone caught with a dozen or more will be considered possessing them with the intention of selling them.

Red Abalone. The only type that can be harvested.

When the van did not return to the divers, the alleged poachers loaded a pickup truck. The wardens followed the car to a nearby hotel and found coolers filled with abalone inside the divers’ hotel room. Most of the abalones were smaller than the legal size.

The wardens found a total of 166 abalones with the group, Ponting said. The suspects were booked on charges of felony conspiracy to harvest abalone for commercial purposes, which carries a fine of up to $40,000, said Game Warden Patrick Foy. Two vehicles also were

seized along with $6,000 in cash.

The black market for abalone is large and poaching is widespread, despite official efforts to eradicate the practise.

“We always only catch the tip of the iceberg, there is so much

abalone poaching going on because of the black market,” Ponting

explained. “We can pick almost any group and watch them poaching

abalone. It’s really unsettling.”

What is an abalone?

The abalone is a medium sized to very large edible sea snail prized for its exquisite flavour. There is roughly 100 known species world wide, all of them being gastropod molluscs belonging to the genus Haliotis. You may stumble upon a species marketed as “Chilean abalone” in the food trade, but this is not a real abalone; its name is Concholepas concholepas and it belongs to an entirely different family.

Since abalones are found in so many different parts of the world, they are known under many different names, such as abulón in Spanish, ormer in Jersey and Guernsey, pāua in

New Zealand, muttonfish or muttonshells in Australia, perlemoen in South Africa, and Venus’s-ears, ear-shells, and sea-ears in British and American English.

Abalones reach sexual maturity when they are comparatively small, but they won’t produce any significant amount of offspring until they grow bigger. A small abalone may release around 10,000 eggs at a time, which may sound like a big number but is dwarfed compared to the 11 million eggs released at a time by really large abalones. As a result of this, the removal of abalones from the sea before they have a chance to grow large is highly detrimental to the survival of the species.

Abalone has been farmed since the 1950s in Japan and China, and during the 1990s the practise spread to other parts of the world in response to dwindling wild populations. Today, it is possible to purchase farmed abalone and refrain from removing specimens from the wild. China and Japan are still major producers of abalone, but has been joined by Korea, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Namibia, Iceland, Ireland, Canada, USA, Mexico, and Chile.

Catching abalone in California

As mentioned above, it is legal to fetch a certain amount of abalone per day and year in Californian waters if you have a California fishing license and an abalone stamp card. The abalone stamp card has 24 tags and captured abalones must be tagged immediately. The legal size is (a minimum of) seven inches (178 mm) measured across the shell. A person may be in possession of no more than three abalones at any given time. Other regulations to keep in mind are listed below. Always check with the California Department of Fish & Game before you go abalone hunting in California to find out if there have been any regulatory changes.

· Scuba diving for abalone is always prohibited; you may only pick them from the shore or use breath-hold techniques.

· Abalone may only be taken from April to November, not including July.

· You may only take Red abalones; no Black, White, Pink, or Flat abalones.

· You may not take any abalones south of the mouth of the San Francisco Bay.

· You may not sell any part of the abalone, including the shell.

· Only abalones still attached to the shell can be legally transported.

As reported earlier this week, Danish television presenter Lisbeth Koelster was put on trial after deliberately pouring diluted anti-dandruff shampoo into a fish tank housing 12 guppies. The aim of the “experiment” was to demonstrate the level of toxic material in the shampoo. After being subjected to the shampoo, all but one of the fishes died and a Danish veterinarian who watched the show decided to press charges.

Koelster had pleaded not guilty, but the Glostrup court found her guilty of violating animal protection laws. Judge Thomas Lohse said Koelster had “deliberately committed an act of cruelty to animals” and violated animal protection laws. She was however not found to have violated any laws regarding experimentation on animals.

Koelster will not have to pay any fine since the event took place in 2004; four and a half year from now. The judge found this amount of time unreasonable and therefore decided not to fine her.

The Spanish police have seized 11 tonnes of shark fins in destined to be shipped to Hong Kong.

According to a statement from the police, the shark fins did not appear to come from a protected species but were found in a warehouse that lacked authorization to export shark fins.

The confiscation took place in Huelva in south-western Spain, to where the fins had been transported from a port in Galicia in the north-western part of the country.

The shark fins have an estimated value of 136,800 Euros (186,335 USD). European Union countries are the main exporters of shark fins to China.

In many markets, shark meat does not yield a high price and fishermen therefore normally remove the fin from caught sharks and let the shark back to the sea. Without its fin the shark can no longer swim and will sink to the bottom where it either dies from suffocation (sharks need to swim to breathe) or gets eaten alive by other aquatic animals.

In parts of Asia, shark fins are used in folk remedies and to make traditional shark fin soup. As the standard of living rises in China, more and more people can afford to purchase shark fins and one pound of dried shark fin can now retail for over 300 USD.

The Suffolk Police has decided to call off their investigation into the mysterious disappearance of 27 koi and seven goldfish, since the culprit turned out to be a hungry heron.

When the expensive fish disappeared from their home in Carlton Colville, UK, the police suspected human thieves and promptly issued a witness appeal which asked if locals had seen “anything suspicious” or if they had been offered similar fish. The appeal was however recalled soon, as the police found out the true identity of the perpetrator.

A further statement issued by police explained: “This incident is now being attributed to a large heron.”
“We take all incidents very seriously and we were worried that someone might have made off with fish worth thousands of pounds”, a police spokesman explains. “Thankfully, on this occasion an arrest wasn’t necessary.”

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.

This August, a turtle decided to take a stroll through a cannabis garden in a secluded part of one of America’s public parklands. This wouldn’t have been a problem for the resourceful horticulturist responsible for the plantation if it hadn’t been for the fact that this particular turtle was fitted with a GPS tracking device and followed by a park ranger. When the park ranger realised that the turtle had led him to an outdoor hydroponics lab, he contacted the police who stalked out the patch and eventually arrested its illicit gardener.

Florida Box Turtle. Picture by: Jonathan Zander

“He felt like he had a layer of security, but he probably never counted on a turtle with a tracking device leading us to that location and finding the field,” says Sergeant Robert Lachance of the U.S. Park Police. On a personal note I must humbly admit that I likely would have made the same misstake and been caught by Sergeant Robert Lachance as well. But after this I will make sure to consider the risk of turtlea with GPS tracking devices if I ever decide to get into the drug trade. (Just joking!)

The park in question was the Rock Creek Park, a large urban natural area with public park facilities that bisects Washington, D.C. The parklands follow the course of Rock Creek across the border between D.C. and Maryland and connect with the Rock Creek Stream Valley Park and the Rock Creek Regional Park in Montgomery County.