It's 4:15 in the morning and a dense fog blankets the South Terminal on New Bedford's waterfront. A lost Canadian trucker with a load of lobsters flags down Sgt. Pat Moran, a 26-year veteran of the Environmental Police. Moran guides the stranger to his destination, the Tichon plant, and continues a waterfront patrol that began at 2 a.m.
"I'm down here every day, at every fish house," says Moran, a Mattapoisett resident. Fisheries enforcement on the New Bedford waterfront became his full-time beat around 18 months ago after the Environmental Police contracted with the National Marine Fisheries Service to monitor commercial fisheries in New Bedford.
Enforcement is a delicate subject on the waterfront, with many fishermen resentful of what they consider the overly harsh treatment meted out by state and federal enforcers in the past and not only in New Bedford.
"We've worked hard to develop a relationship with these guys," Moran says. "They see us every single day. It has taken a long time to cultivate it but we understand their struggles. We're not here to hurt anybody."
"These fishermen work very hard in one of the most dangerous jobs out there," Cullen says.
Moran says consistency is the key to earning respect from the waterfront community. "I can write someone a warning two fish houses down for, say, oversized lobsters and come here and they already know about it. If I try to take someone else to court for oversize lobsters, that's not going to fly."
A number of fish house owners agreed that the officers working the waterfront have established a good working relationship with fishermen.
"The law enforcement presence we have now with the Environmental Police is light years better than the Gestapo-like agents that were here in the early '80s," said Eric Orman, owner of Tempest Fisheries. "And the National Marine Fisheries people tended to be from outside the area and outside the job description. These guys are more helpful and have more experience."
Every morning at 6, Moran makes it a point to visit the seafood auction.
Upstairs at the auction, there is plenty of banter between fishermen and police. Moran says he recently asked Carlos Rafael for his autograph after a picture of the fishing magnate appeared in The Standard-Times. "But I told him he had to sign it 'The Codfather,'" Moran jokes.
A knot of men study the wide-screen TV as the auction commences, among them Rafael. "Pat gave me a $50 ticket last week for taking some fluke out before 6 a.m. I was pissed, but what am I going to do? I was wrong," Rafael says. "These guys have a job to do. If they were just sitting in their truck, we'd complain they were wasting the taxpayers money."
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