May 7, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — In the harbor off Leonard’s Wharf, the large steel boats with their signature green hulls are rusting in the salt air, their dormant nets still coiled as if ready to scoop up schools of cod or haddock.
In the parking lot behind Reidar’s Manufacturing, more than a dozen trawls molder in the dirt, their floats and cables weathered and waiting.
As the new fishing season begins, many of the city’s fishermen are unemployed, their suppliers stuck with excess inventory, and local officials are questioning whether the millions of dollars in lost revenue will cost the port its ranking as the nation’s most valuable, as it has been for the past 17 years.
Carlos Rafael, the disgraced fishing mogul known as “The Codfather,” is now in prison. But the consequences of his crimes are still being felt throughout New Bedford.
“It’s devastating what’s happened to us, and other businesses here,” said Tor Bendiksen, the manager of Reidar’s, a marine supply company.
Rafael, whose commercial fishing company was among the nation’s largest, pleaded guilty last year to flouting federal quotas and smuggling cash out of the country.
Six months ago, officials at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration responded with an unprecedented punishment, temporarily banning 60 fishing permit-holders in the area from allowing their boats to operate and halting all operations by the fishing sector that failed to properly account for their catch.
Read the full story at the Boston Globe