SavingSeaFood - Investigation snags fisheries law enforcment office

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Investigation snags fisheries law enforcment office

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on Oct. 18 that Dale Jones, former director of the Office of Law Enforcement in the National Fisheries Service, now holds the job of fishing program specialist, which is involved in the National Marine Fisheries Service’s trade-monitoring program. His salary went from $158,000 to $155,000 a year, NOAA spokesman Scott Smullen said.

In an e-mail, Smullen said, “Mr. Jones is working in Silver Spring, Md. He is earning $155,000 a year in his current position. He is no longer a member of the Senior Executive Service.”

"But goodness knows they just reassign or put out to pasture lawbreakers who work for government, instead of firing or fining them, unlike in the fish business where they take away your livelihood,”said Marc Agger, president of Agger Fish Corp. in Brooklyn, N.Y

Also, last week, NOAA’s General Counsel for Enforcement Litigation reassigned a senior enforcement lawyer, Charles Juliand, to matters related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Several Inspector General reports criticize Juliand, who worked in NOAA’s Northeast Region for almost 30 years, for displaying “animus” toward the New England and Mid-Atlantic commercial fishing industry.

His salary was unaffected by the new assignment. He will still be paid $155,000 a year, Smullen said.

Marc Agger, president of Agger Fish Corp. in Brooklyn, N.Y., said reassigning Jones and Juliand was a “step in the right direction,” but the decision still didn’t make up for the years of steep fines imposed on the region’s fishermen, penalties which he said put many commercial anglers out of work.

“But goodness knows they just reassign or put out to pasture lawbreakers who work for government, instead of firing or fining them, unlike in the fish business where they take away your livelihood,” Agger said in an e-mail.

A September Inspector General report, citing congressional testimony from a New England fisherman, states that Juliand, who the report refers to as a “senior GCEL attorney,” would set fines “initially high to pressure settlements.”

Testifying in March, the fisherman said Juliand told him that if he didn’t pay a $27,000 fine, Juliand would bring him before administrative law judges who hear NOAA’s enforcement cases, and the fine would become much higher.

“I was fined by [the senior GCEL attorney] $27,000 and I called [my attorney]. As time went on, [the senior GCEL attorney] said that ‘if you don’t pay the $27,000 right now, if you want to go in front of one of my judges, you’ll be paying $120,000 to $140,000.’ I settled for $25,000 bucks. I was scared to death. They wouldn’t give me the boat back. I couldn’t get the boat back to fish and make payments until I paid the fine,” according to the testimony included in the September Inspector General report.

Juliand issued a statement slamming the September Inspector General report, calling it a “smear campaign in which false, unsubstantiated charges have been made to both the OIG and to some members of Congress.”

Read the complete story from Keys Net.

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