Enforcement Archives - Page 23 of 67

Second midcoast man accused in lobster boat sinking is sentenced

March 8, 2017 — A St. George man was sentenced Thursday to two years in prison for sinking a competitor’s lobster boat last summer.

Vincent Hilt, 22, pleaded guilty during a hearing in Knox County Unified Court to felony charges of aggravated criminal mischief and felony theft.

Hilt is the second person convicted in the Sept. 1 sinking of the 36-foot lobster boat Oracle owned by Joshua Hupper of St. George. In January, Devlin Meklin, 21, of Warren admitted to the same charges as Hilt and was sentenced to two years with all but three months suspended.

The case against Hilt’s captain – Alan B. Norwood Jr., 47, of St. George – remains pending in court. Norwood has pleaded not guilty to aggravated criminal mischief for allegedly paying Hilt $500 to sink Hupper’s boat.

Hilt and Meklin both have been ordered by the court to pay restitution of $16,267 to Hupper for costs he incurred. Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Baroody said that damages totaled more than $100,000, but insurance paid for much of that loss.

Read the full story at the Portland Press Herald

Pair pleads guilty to illegal fishing

March 8, 2017 — The United States Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday in federal court that David Saunders Jr. and Michael Potter pleaded guilty to federal charges regarding the illegal harvest and sale of Atlantic striped bass from federal waters off the coast of North Carolina.

According to the indictments and information in the public records, in February 2010, a special agent with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) received information that commercial trawlers were illegally fishing for Atlantic striped bass in federal waters off the coast of North Carolina.

Upon receiving the information, NOAA engaged the assistance of the U.S. Coast Guard and a patrol vessel in the area intercepted one of 17 commercial trawlers.

Based on its review, NOAA determined that in seven separate fishing trips between Jan. 27, 2009, and Feb. 9, 2010, Saunders, then Captain of the Bridgot Denise, a commercial trawler, harvested approximately 14,579 pounds of Atlantic striped bass from the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). He sold the fish to a fish dealer in Wanchese, NC. The estimated fair market retail value of the 14,579 pounds of illegally harvested fish exceeds $116,000.

Read the full story at WECT

Marine Patrol Officer Brandon Bezio Receives 2017 MLA Officer of the Year Award

March 6, 2017 — The following has been released by the Maine Department of Marine Resources:

Marine Patrol Officer Brandon Bezio, who serves in the St. George-Warren Patrol, receives the 2017 Maine Lobstermen’s Association Maine Patrol Officer of the Year Award. The award, presented Saturday, March 4, 2017, at the Fishermen’s Forum in Rockport, is an annual recognition of Marine Patrol Officers who provide outstanding service in support of the Maine lobster industry. Pictured with MPO Bezio is Marine Patrol Colonel Jon Cornish (left), MLA Board President David Cousens (2nd from right), and MLA Executive Director Patrice McCarron (right). (Photo courtesy of Mark Haskell Photography)

Environmental Group Warns Of ‘Trans-Shipping’ Dangers In Pacific

February 27, 2017 — An environmental group dedicated to ocean conservation is warning Pacific nations to be alert to the dangers of what’s called trans-shipping, which it says can be used to mask illegal fishing activity.

Trans-shipping means fishing boats can stay at sea for an extended period of time, in some cases more than a year, by transferring their stock to another boat and receiving fuel and supplies.

The US-based group, Oceana, said that practice could often involve the laundering of fish, human rights abuses, and labour violations.

Its senior campaign director, Beth Lowell, said trans-shipping was a huge problem around the world and it was also likely to be happening in the Pacific due to its large tuna fisheries.

Read the full story at Pacific Islands Report

Hidden no more: First-ever global view of transshipment in commercial fishing industry

February 22, 2017 — Transshipment, the transfer of goods from one boat to another, is a major pathway for illegally caught and unreported fish to enter the global seafood market. It has also been associated with drug smuggling and slave labor. Illegal in many cases, transshipment has been largely invisible and nearly impossible to manage, because it often occurs far from shore and out of sight. Until now.

Today, with the release of our report, The Global View of Transshipment: Preliminary Findings, we present the first-ever global footprint of transshipment in the fishing industry. The report explains how data scientists from SkyTruth and Global Fishing Watch (a partnership of Oceana, SkyTruth and Google) analyzed Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from ships at sea to developed a tool to identify and track 90 percent of the world’s large refrigerated cargo vessels, ships that collect catch from multiple fishing boats at sea and carry it to port.

According to the analysis, from 2012 through 2016, refrigerated cargo vessels, known as “reefers,” participated in more than 5,000 likely transshipments (instances in which they rendezvoused with an AIS-broadcasting fishing vessel and drifted long enough to receive a catch). In addition, the data revealed more than 86,000 potential transshipments in which reefers exhibited transshipment-like behavior, but there were no corresponding AIS signals from fishing vessels. Brian Sullivan, Google’s lead for Global Fishing Watch, will present the findings at the Economist World Ocean Summit in Indonesia today. The report, along with the underlying data and our list of likely and suspected transshipments, will be freely available on our website, globalfishingwatch.org.

The global scale of transshipment and its ability to facilitate suspicious activity, such as illegal fishing and human rights abuses, is exposed in a complementary report being issued today by our partners at Oceana. The opportunity for mixing legal and illegal catch during the collection of fish from multiple fishing boats provides an easy route for illegal players to get their product to market. This obscures the seafood supply chain from hook to port and hobbles efforts at sustainability because it prevents an accurate measurement of the amount of marine life being taken from the sea.

Read the full story at Phys.org

CALIFORNIA: Morgan Hill restaurant fined over fish labeling

February 16, 2017 — Something fishy was going on at Odeum in Morgan Hill, Santa Clara County officials suspected.

The upscale restaurant — a big fish in the Morgan Hill restaurant scene, helmed and owned by a chef with a Michelin star — was serving tilapia in place of the petrale sole listed on the menu for a period of more than a year, an investigation by the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office alleged. A spokesperson for Odeum declined to comment.

Now, according to a civil judgment announced Wednesday, the restaurant must pay $120,000 — $30,000 in restitution and $90,000 in civil penalties — and offer a $30 gift card to any customer who ordered sole at Odeum between October 2014 and March 2016 and files a claims form by May 31, the Santa Clara district attorney’s office announced Wednesday.

Read the full story at SFGate.com

Fishwise Releases Two White Papers on Seafood Supply Chain Labor Abuse and Traceability

February 1, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — Fishwise, a Sustainable Seafood Consultancy in California, has issued two white papers on seafood traceability and labor abuse in the seafood supply chain.

Both papers are comprehensive reviews of how both government and industry is tackling the problems identified.

The reports include some recommendation on supply chain best practices, that Fishwise hopes will be adopted by its retail partners, which include Albertsons Co., Target Corp., and Hy-Vee Inc.

The reports also detail the industry support of many of these initiatives through corporate programs, including those of Thai Union, High Liner, Young’s Seafood and the National Fisheries Institute.

The Fishwise traceability white paper, Advancing Traceability in the Seafood Industry, calls for ongoing collaboration. Traceability – a term that describes the ability to track the flow of products and product transformations throughout the supply chain – has received more attention as a way to combat IUU fishing. In particular, the European Union and the United States have both recently instituted anti-IUU fishing regulations requiring increased record keeping and reporting for select imported seafood products. These regulations, building upon those addressing food safety, have prompted companies around the globe to make improvements to their product tracking systems and to initiate conversations within their supply chains. FishWise’s white paper highlights many key traceability initiatives and outlines next steps all types of businesses can take to improve their traceability practices.

NFI has sued the US government over the implementation of its traceability rules, arguing that they are less targeted than those of the EU, which NFI supports.

Mariah Boyle, Traceability Division Director at FishWise says it is an exciting time for an NGO/Consultant to be working on traceability. “ New government requirements, novel efforts by individual companies, new NGO collaborations, and pre-competitive initiatives by private sector leaders are all focusing on this critical foundation of seafood supply chains,” said Boyle. “By sharing examples and providing guidance, we hope our white paper will empower more supply chains to make traceability improvements.”

The second white paper deals with Labor Abuse. “Social Responsibility in the Global Seafood Industry“, outlines the drivers of human rights and labor abuses, identifies social responsibility resources for businesses, and provides information on key legislation and initiatives. The paper traces the history of media investigations of labor abuse, starting with challenges to aquaculture, and moving to writing about slavery and forced labor on fishing vessels.

“Collaboration is critical because no one government, company, or NGO has the influence to eliminate human rights abuses on their own,” said Mariah Boyle, Traceability Division Director at FishWise.

The report highlights efforts to create full databases of blacklisted vessels, and ways to keep them out of a company supply chain.

This story originally appeared on Seafood News.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

Help fight illegal fishing with Global Fishing Watch

January 31, 2017 — Hundreds of millions of people depend on the ocean for their livelihoods, and almost 3 billion rely on it as a protein source. But countless threats — overfishing, destructive fishing practices, bycatch, dishonest catch reporting, habitat destruction — threaten our oceans and the people who depend on them. It’s an economic problem, too: illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing is a universal problem that accounts for 11-26 million tons of fish caught and $10-23 billion in global economic losses each year.

It seems overwhelming. But what if there was a tool that gave all people the power to become watchdogs of our oceans? How can technology help enforcement agencies to better monitor their territory at sea? How can we help identify illegal fishing and protect ocean habitats?

These are all questions that Oceana, SkyTruth, and Google contemplated as part of their joint effort to create a new tool called Global Fishing Watch – just named one of the Top 10 Ocean Conservation Victories of 2016. Global Fishing Watch is an online platform that allows anyone with an internet connection to monitor when and where commercial fishing is happening around the globe. This new technology is the result of a powerful collaboration that takes advantage of the strengths unique to each partnering organization: Oceana’s ability to execute winning advocacy campaigns to protect the world’s oceans, SkyTruth’s ability to use satellites to monitor threats to the planet and Google’s ability to organize and make large and complex data sets universally accessible.

Read the full story at Discover Magazine

Two arrested for alleged fisheries violations in Annapolis area

January 31, 2017 — Two people have been arrested after an inspection by fisheries officers last week.

Fisheries officer Jacklyn Titus said that on Jan. 22 fisheries officers from the Digby detachment conducted an inspection of a vehicle and a scallop vessel in the Annapolis area and it resulted in discovery of a number of alleged violations.

“As a result of the detected violations, two individuals were placed under arrest,” she said. “Officers seized 1,600 pounds of scallops valued at approximately $21,000 and they seized the vehicle.”

Read the full story at the Annapolis County Spectator

Federal Government Declares Fishery Disaster for Low Pink Salmon Harvest in Gulf of Alaska

January 30, 2017 — Governor Bill Walker and Lt. Governor Byron Mallott welcomed news that the U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker accepted the state’s request for a disaster declaration on pink salmon harvests in the Gulf of Alaska last week. In accordance with Section 312 (a) of the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Management and Conservation Act (MSA), the State of Alaska requested the federal government declare a fishery disaster for poor pink salmon runs across the Gulf region in 2016.

“The impacts of low pink salmon runs are being felt across the entire Gulf of Alaska,” said Governor Bill Walker. “In addition to commercial fishermen and fish processors, those who sell fuel, tackle, supplies, groceries, and lodging are also struggling from the poor season. Local governments will also feel the burden on their economic base. We are pleased with this news from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and we will work with the federal government going forward to address this issue. I thank all the legislators who tirelessly advocated for this declaration, especially Representative Louise Stutes for making the first request.”