Police seize 3,000 pounds of illegal haddock in New Bedford

The Massachusetts Environmental Police (MEP) seized more than 3,000 pounds of illegally caught haddock at a New Bedford processing plant on Thursday, MEP officials said, marking the first large-scale raid of the groundfish season.

Deputy Colonel Patrick Moran said he was conducting a routine foot patrol to inspect processing plants on the New Bedford waterfront when he discovered what appeared to be undersized fish on an assembly line ready for filleting. He ordered the processing plant to temporarily cease operations while he measured the fish, finding that about 3,000 of the 11,000 pounds of haddock were under the legal limit of 16 inches.

MEP said it would not disclose the name of the vessel that caught the illegal fish or the processing plant until charges were formally filed. However, industry sources confirmed that the illegal fish was caught by the F/V Fischeran 82-foot trawler based in New Bedford and owned by M&P Fishing Corp. Business records list Mario Ribeiro and Pedro Cura as the company’s owners. The captain’s name was not disclosed. Col. Moran said the illegal fish was unloaded late Wednesday night at the BASE Seafood Auction and subsequently sold to the unnamed processing plant.

Ribeiro and Cura could not be reached for comment on Monday.

“If you catch fish that are too small, you’re taking away the fish that can be caught next year,” said Colonel Moran. “That has a cumulative effect on the health of the fishery.”

The groundfish industry doesn’t have much in common with New Bedford’s lucrative scallop industry. In 2012, regulators declared the groundfish industry a disaster due to decades of overfishing and poor management. Year after year, quotas were cut, and the industry continued to shrink. Haddock are among the most abundant and most fished of the 13 species collectively known as groundfish. Last year, however, the haddock quota was cut by 41 percent, a move that met with significant industry opposition.

The F/V Fischer was profiled in the Standard-Times last year, and the owner and captain expressed frustration with the high costs of operating a bottom fishing vessel while profits remained stagnant.

“It gets expensive quickly,” F/V Fischer CCaptain Paulo Valente told The Standard-Times: “We are paying for a quota and all the regulations make it really difficult… It puts a lot of pressure on me because when I leave port I have to provide for myself and my crew. I have to pay the bills and at the end of the trip I have to show some profit.”

Colonel Moran said charges would be brought against the captain, but fines would be capped at $1,000 (€933) – which he said significantly underestimates the environmental impact of landing undersized fish. It is unclear whether similar charges will be brought against the seafood auction or the processing plant.

“Unfortunately, for some fishermen, a fine is the price they pay for being allowed to operate their business,” he said.

He added that MEP staff are overwhelmed and only one official is officially assigned to oversee the Port of New Bedford, the country’s busiest commercial fishing port.

“I’m concerned about how much we’re missing,” he said. “To say we’re not detecting all the violations would be an understatement.”

Col. Moran said the fish will not be wasted. It was donated to the Fishermen’s Preservation Trust on Martha’s Vineyard and the Wampanoag tribes in Aquinnah and Mashpee.

Article courtesy of Will Sennott and The New Bedford Light. Read more here.