May 28, 2017 — Harbormaster and shellfish employees waded knee-deep in the Wareham River last weekend, fetching dead, floating fish and dropping them into black plastic trash bags.
Each fish would serve as evidence. An angler had spied Environmental Police seizing 225 black sea bass from another boat and dumped his own illegal catch to avoid arrest.
On the same sunny Sunday, beach-goers snapped cellphone pictures of boats that buzzed to the shoreline to drop off coolers, which Wareham Harbormaster Garry Buckminster believes were filled with illegal fish. The boats then motored back offshore to catch more.
“It’s really a wild west in some of these areas,” Buckminster said.
Black sea bass season had officially begun.
Hundreds of anglers converged on Wareham, Mattapoisett and other SouthCoast communities to take advantage of the pristine fishing conditions and haul sea bass from close-to-shore shallow waters. Most began the recreational season bagging the limit of five per person. But others hauled in 30 times that much, likely with their eyes on the black market, where black sea bass can sell for $5 a pound.
“As long as you have people buying the stuff, people are going to poach it,” Maj. Pat Moran of the Environmental Police said.
Smugglers stow the bass in hidden compartments within their boats, using false bottoms, plastic bags and beer coolers to collect their catch. Then it’s a rush to shore and out of town before they’re spotted by environmental police.
“They’ve really got their racket put together,” Buckminster said. “They’d going to do whatever they can. They’ve got a plan in place and they’re trying to make it happen.”