April 19, 2015 — A judge on Friday threw out charges of overfishing against Hampton Bays commercial fisherman Bill Reed because neither prosecutors nor the state environmental officers who made the charges could point to a statute regulating the landing of fish in weather emergencies.
Southampton Town Justice Barbara Wilson dismissed the charges against Mr. Reed after state Department of Environmental Conservation officers acknowledged that a so-called "safe harbor" protocol for allowing commercial fishing boats operating under another state's fishing rules to land their fish in a New York port if there is a weather or mechanical emergency aboard the vessel is a well known protocol but not an official statute.
The DEC officers had testified at Mr. Reed's trial on Friday morning that the circumstances leading to Mr. Reed's January landing of a load of fluke nearly 10 times what was allowed under New York State regulations at the time did not meet the safe harbor protocol. But when the officers couldn't point to a specific statute detailing what the protocol was, Mr. Reed's attorney, Dan Rodgers demanded that the charges be dismissed. Judge Wilson agreed.
"They're requiring this man to follow a law that isn't even written down, it's in their heads," Mr. Rodgers said in a phone interview afterward. "I said to the officer, could you tell me where this safe harbor protocol is and he said 'everybody just knows.' It was bizarre."
Mr. Reed had been charged back in January with illegally landing about 625 pounds of fluke when his boat, Providence, returned to Shinnecock Inlet from a fishing trip 50 miles south of Long Island. The fluke landing limit at the time was just 70 pounds for New York State ports.