September 19, 2019 — Raymond and Richie Canastra, the long-time owners of the Buyers and Sellers Exchange (BASE), the New Bedford, Massachusetts-based seafood auction, have made another apparent attempt to purchase some of Carlos Rafael’s commercial fishing vessels and again have been thwarted, Undercurrent News has learned.
This time the two brothers’ effort, which involved stepping in front of another buyer, has been done in by a state judge’s order.
Merita Hopkins, an associate judge in the Bristol County, Massachusetts, Superior Court, on Friday vacated her approval, given two days earlier, of a request by BASE for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would have stopped Rafael from selling seven of his 11 scallop vessels to Charlie and Michael Quinn, the father-and-son owners of Quinn Fisheries, a 33-year-old, New Bedford-based scallop operation with six vessels already harvesting, for nearly $46 million.
The move by the Canastras, whose auction handles roughly half of all the Atlantic scallops caught in New England as well as a considerable amount of groundfish, seems to have been a prelude to them making an offer themselves for the boats, which also come with some groundfishing quota.