Gray Sole Archives - Saving Seafood

This fisherman is determined to fight the rising tide of government quotas

November 10, 2017 — There’s another species in the ocean that is slowly disappearing. This one doesn’t have fins, but orange waders, heavy rubber gloves, and fishing tackle. It’s the commercial fishermen. The industry in which they work, fishermen say, is being choked by unmanageable fines and regulations.

Jim Ford of Lisa Ann Fisheries is one of those still standing. Fewer and fewer boats are going out to sea, to Ford’s dismay. While there used to be dozens of draggers going out of Newburyport, he’s now the only fisherman doing it full-time — pulling a net or trawling the rocky seabed to scoop up his catch.

Ford, 47, disagrees that the sea is being depleted. One of his recent 14-hour runs yielded 1,000 pounds of gray sole (worth about $3 a pound at auction), 300 pounds of monkfish, and some flounder. On his 52-foot fiberglass boat, Lisa Ann III, Ford typically steams out at midnight for a three-hour trip to Jeffreys Ledge with two crewmen on deck and a federal observer — a third-party ombudsman — to monitor overfishing.

This government watchman, a stranger with notepad and pen — and sometimes getting seasick — has spoiled fishing excursions for Ford. The thrill of the hunt, the wild unpredictability of the wind and the waves has turned into a list of quotas, trip limits, and gear restrictions.

He hopes that “some day the marine fishery agencies will figure out there’s more cod and other fish in the ocean then they think there is now. The government doesn’t see what I see out there every day.” Still, fishing policies aside, Ford never fails to get excited when the catch sensor blinks, indicating that there’s plenty of fish in the net. “I love fishing. Otherwise, I’d put my anchor down and call it quits,” Ford said. He spoke with the Globe about why he remains hooked.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe

The boats that land the fish

May 11, 2016 — To ask the question “what boat landed this fish?” may be one of the most important environmental, social and political acts of 2016.

These are some names of Gloucester day boats, boats that make short trips to Jeffreys Ledge, Ipswich Bay and Middle Bank: the Maria GS, the Santo Pio, the Angela & Rose, the Janaya & Joseph, and Cat Eyes. And there are more. These boats land a mix of species that call the Gulf of Maine home, but they are primarily landing codfish, dab flounder, blackback flounder, yellowtail flounder, gray sole and some whiting.

These are some of the offshore Gloucester boats currently fishing the northern edge of George’s Bank: The Miss Trish, The Midnight Sun, the Teresa Marie III, the Harmony, the Teresa Marie IV and the Lady Jane. Again, there are more boats than this. Right now, they are landing haddock, redfish, pollock, codfish, dab flounder, gray sole and some hake.

In port, these boats, and others, can be seen tied up at Felicia Oil, Rose Marine, Gloucester Marine Railways and the State Fish Pier, wharfs along the Inner Harbor, many in clear sight of some Gloucester restaurants.

In an effort to celebrate and promote the quality seafood that these boats land, Gloucester Seafood Processing in Blackburn Circle stamps every issue of fish with the name of the fishing vessel that landed it. They are hoping other processors will, too. Restaurants — particularly in Gloucester — should proudly be announcing to their guests, “This pollock was landed yesterday on the Angela & Rose!” — or the Janaya & Joseph, or the Santo Pio.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

Proposed fishing framework: Something for everyone to hate

March 23, 2016 — NOAA Fisheries has opened the public comment period for the proposed management rule that includes withering cuts to several groundfish species and reductions in the overall level of at-sea monitoring (ASM) coverage for the beleaguered groundfish fleet.

It seems the proposed rule, also known as Framework 55, has a little bit of something for everyone to hate. They have until close of business on April 5 to submit their comments to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Environmental groups, such as Oceana, are bitterly criticizing the projected reduction in ASM for groundfish boats to about 14 percent from about 24 percent, saying the rule will “weaken the chances of recovery for this historic fishery.”

Fishermen point to the further reductions in what they already consider minuscule catch quotas and say those reductions — combined with the absorption of the costs for ASM — could finally be the management initiative that shutters the Northeast multispecies groundfish fishery for good.

Savage quota cuts

The catch limits, set by the NOAA Fisheries for the 2016 fishing season that begins May 1, include savage cuts to the annual catch limits for gray sole (55 percent), Georges Bank cod (66 percent), northern windowpane flounder (33 percent) and Gulf of Maine yellowtail flounder (26 percent).

“We will not have a fishery as we know it anymore,” Vito Giacalone, policy director for the Northeast Seafood Coalition, said on Tuesday. “In fact, I think you can already make the case that we don’t have a fishery you can recognize now compared to any period in the past.”

Read the full story at The Gloucester Times

Federal Agents Bust a New Bedford Fishing Business

February 26, 2016 — He called all the fish haddock, even if they weren’t. The dab fish. The gray sole.

If the fish inspectors weren’t watching when his boats came into the docks in New Bedford, according to authorities, fish mogul Carlos Rafael labeled every species of fish he caught as the cheaper, more common haddock — while secretly trading hundreds of pounds of more coveted species for bags of cash.

The goal: evade the federal quota on the more lucrative fish.

“When the [inspector] disappears, that’s when we got a chance to make the fish disappear,” Rafael allegedly told an undercover federal agent, posing as a Russian gangster who wanted to buy his business.

Rafael, 64, the owner of Carlos Seafood Inc. in New Bedford and one of the Northeast’s biggest commercial fishing entrepreneurs, was arrested by federal agents Friday, charged with falsifying federal documents.

Authorities said that Rafael, who owns more than 40 fishing vessels ported in New Bedford and Gloucester, developed a lucrative scheme to cheat the federal fishing quotas that were enacted — to the dismay of fishermen from New Bedford to Maine — to protect the sustainability of certain fish species.

Rafael allegedly told his boat captains to label fish they hauled in as a common species such as haddock that they were allowed to fish without violating the quota. In reality, his fishermen would be bringing in fish that would have been restricted by a quota, such as pollock. His company would then buy the fish at the lower price of haddock, but sell it at its higher market price to a New York buyer.

According to authorities, Rafael capitalized on his standing as the owner of the fishing boats and as the owner of the company that served as a broker for the fish haul — and on lax monitoring regulations that let fishermen report on their own what kind of fish they catch and buy, and the quantity.

“The vessel operator and the dealer must collude. This is easier when the vessel and the dealer are owned by the same person, here Carlos Rafael,” Ronald Mullett, a special agent with the Internal Revenue Service, said in an affidavit filed in federal court on Friday.

Rafael appeared in court briefly on Friday and was ordered held without bail pending a detention hearing Wednesday.

The alleged scheme began to unravel in June 2015 when Rafael met with two undercover agents posing as Russian gangsters interested in buying his business after he had advertised it for sale earlier that year.

Rafael showed his potential buyers tax statements showing that in 2013 and 2014 his business had reported between $3 million and $4 million in adjusted gross income, according to the affidavit. Also, according to the tax statements, he reported that his business had combined assets of about $21 million. But he allegedly told the potential buyers that he earned much more. He offered to sell his business to the gangsters for $175 million, the affidavit said.

When asked how he could justify valuing his business at $175 million, Rafael allegedly responded, “We are profitable. You will not see it on paper for Carlos Seafood,” court records say.

According to Friday’s court filing, Rafael is accused of hiding much of his business off-the-books. At one point at a meeting in January 2016, Rafael and his bookkeeper, Debra Messier, 60, allegedly explained what they called “the dance,” the process by which Rafael and others coordinated with his boat captains to falsify federal forms meant to track the quantity and species of fish that was caught. Records for Carlos Seafood were adjusted to match the records of the fishing boats, the court records allege.

In one case in January, one of Rafael’s boats recorded that it had hauled in 8,200 pounds of haddock, well within the quota for that species. Records for Carlos Seafood show that the company bought 4,595 pounds of haddock from the vessel, at $2.75 a pound.

According to court documents, Rafael explained to the undercover agents that the boat had hauled in dabs, which he fraudulently labeled as haddock, and that he in turn sold the dabs to his New York City buyer, for $3.15 a pound.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe