Captain Bill Blount, Nantucket’s lone commercial dragger, of the fishing vessel, Ruthie B, is part of a growing fleet of commercial fishermen in the region who are fed up with the seemingly cryptic fining procedures employed by the National Marine Fisheries Services. This issue came to light this summer at Caroline Geishecker’s Chatham Coffee Company where this businesswoman overheard similar "ridiculous" stories from local fishermen about the enforcement actions of the National Marine Fisheries Service.
"They changed the area in a fishing area, but did it very poorly," said Blount. "I just noticed it, but they never sent any notification out. I was in the corner of the new boundary and then I towed out. I was honest with them (the U.S. Coast Guard patrolling the area that caught him) and did everything up front, [but] there was no way they could have caught me if I decided to lie."
For his honesty, the Coast Guard, after threatening to take him to Gloucester, Mass., impound his boat and revoke his permits, escorted Blount and the Ruthie B. to New Bedford. In New Bedford, the Coast Guard confiscated his catch and made an example of Blount in front of the commercial fishermen in port at the time.
"Besides all the humiliation, I talked to everybody I knew and nobody knew about the boundary change," said Blount. "I just remember looking at a map and saying, ‘hey, that’s the boundary I remember.’"
After initially fining Blount the full $130,000, the NMFS lowered his fine to $10,000.
Read the complete story at The Nantucket Independent.