Saving Seafood

A Famed Fishing Port Staggers as Carlos Rafael Goes to Jail

February 12, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — Carlos Rafael, whose initials are emblazoned on boats all over this port city, boasted that his fishing empire was worth even more than official records showed. His trick? When he caught fish that are subject to strict catch limits, like gray sole or cod, he would report that his nets were filled with something far more plentiful, like haddock.

“We call them something else, it’s simple,” Mr. Rafael told visitors who seemed interested in buying his business. “We’ve been doing it for over 30 years.” He showed off a special ledger labeled “cash.” And he described an under-the-table deal he had going with a New York fish buyer, saying at one point, “You’ll never find a better laundromat.”

But Mr. Rafael’s visitors turned out to be Internal Revenue Service agents, and the conversations, caught on tape and described in court documents, began the unraveling of Mr. Rafael, whose reign over a segment of this region’s fishing industry gave him his larger-than-life nickname, “the Codfather.”

As Mr. Rafael sits in prison, having pleaded guilty to lying about his catches and smuggling cash out of the country, nearly two dozen of his boats have been barred from fishing for species like cod and haddock, grinding part of the centuries-old maritime economy in the nation’s most lucrative fishing port to a halt.

Fishermen, ice houses and shoreside suppliers who once did business with Mr. Rafael are anxious, as their own businesses have slowed or stopped. Regulators, who oversee a federal system aimed at limiting what the industry fishes for, want more penalties, raising doubts about the future of the port when it comes to groundfish, the bottom-dwelling species like cod that were once the backbone of the fishing industry in New England.

“There are a lot of people on this waterfront, very hardworking people, whose livelihood depends on Carlos’s landings,” said Jon Mitchell, the mayor of New Bedford. “They don’t deserve to suffer along with him.”

Tony Fernandes, a captain on one of Mr. Rafael’s boats, said he was collecting unemployment benefits and waiting to learn when he may be able to fish again. “He’s putting in his time and he paid his fine,” he said of Mr. Rafael. “We are in limbo.”

For decades, Mr. Rafael, 65, was a blustery, polarizing figure along these piers. He called himself a pirate, and mocked smaller competitors as maggots or mosquitoes. When he wasn’t yelling into his phone in Portuguese, he held court around town, talking politics and fish. The authorities said he owned one of the country’s largest commercial fishing enterprises, and analysts estimate that he controlled about one-quarter of New England’s landings of groundfish. Mr. Rafael also had boats to harvest scallops, which now make up a much greater share of New Bedford’s total landings than groundfish do.

But Mr. Rafael also served as a dealer for the seafood that came off his boats, which prosecutors say made it easier for him to lie about what he was catching and how much he was getting for it.

“Carlos Rafael has been well known in the commercial fishing industry for 30 years,” said Andrew Lelling, the United States attorney for Massachusetts, who prosecuted the case. “And, for almost as long, federal law enforcement has heard rumors and concerns about Rafael acting illegally.”

Some people in New Bedford saw Mr. Rafael far differently — as a Robin Hood of sorts, with a pack of cigarettes and a dinged-up Silverado. He was a Portuguese immigrant who had started out cutting fish and eventually provided jobs for many people along a waterfront that has been bustling since Herman Melville immortalized its cobblestone streets and whaling ships in “Moby Dick.”

He saw an opportunity eight years ago when the government moved forward with a new regulatory system in New England, after Congress mandated that science-based limits be used to prevent overfishing. The cod catch, long a staple of New England’s economy, had fallen over the years.

Instead of the former approach of limiting how many days boats could spend at sea, the new regulations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration set specific ceilings on how many fish could be caught. The rules instantly were contentious, especially when regulators set low limits for dwindling species like cod to help them rebound.

Read the full story at the New York Times 

Massachusetts: ‘Cod is Dead’ uses New Bedford to highlight hurdles affecting fishermen

January 25, 2018 — NEW BEDFORD, Mass. — One of the first scenes in “Rotten: Cod is Dead” opens at night in the Port of New Bedford. Spotlights atop the fishing vessels light the area.

A few belong to Carlos Rafael, noted by their green color and “CR” logo.

A recording of Rafael from 2012 then plays. “I consider myself the biggest player right now on this industry…” he said. “I’m not going down. I’ll be the last one fallen, you can rest assured.”

The case of Rafael first attracted investigative reporters from the documentary to New Bedford in 2016. The episode “Cod is Dead” premiered Jan. 5 on Netflix.

Through two years of reporting, interviewing and filming, director David Mettler discovered more within the fishing industry than the man known as “The Codfather,” who now is serving a 46-month prison sentence.

“It’s so much more than just a way to pay the mortgage,” Mettler said. “There’s a very deeply felt connection to this way of life, and it’s very emotional and very powerful for a lot of people.”

The hour-long show looks beyond Rafael and focuses on catch shares within the New England fishery.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times

 

Jim Kendall: Plenty of guilt to go around on Carlos Rafael

September 18, 2017 — OK, OK, I get it! Carlos Rafael, aka, “The Codfather,” has done some pretty reprehensible things while amassing what seemingly is the largest percentage of ownership of the US multispecies groundfish fleet.

I am not going to try to defend his actions, or his reasoning, but I would like to point out that there is plenty of guilt to go around and some people should not be so quick to point their finger at him alone. What is it that they say about casting the first stone?

Apparently, among his sins is his aforementioned ownership of the largest fleet of multi-species groundfish vessels, as well as some scallop vessels. While this may be true, let us ponder what enabled, abetted, and allowed him to gain such an advantage over everyone else. At this point, he wasn’t breaking the law, he was only taking advantage of it, and of those who most fervently wanted it!

It should be remembered, that the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), as well as the Conservation Law Foundation (CLF), were several of the earliest, most emphatic, and dedicated supporters for the development, adoption, and implementation of the “Catch Share” program.

Read the full opinion piece at the New Bedford Standard-Times

Study: Program To Protect Fish Is Saving Fishermen’s Lives, Too

February 16, 2016 — A program used in many U.S. fisheries to protect the marine environment and maintain healthy fish populations may have an immensely important added benefit: preserving the lives of American fishermen.

That’s according to a new study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers found that catch share programs (where fishermen are allotted a set quota of the catch) reduce some of the notoriously risky behavior fishermen are known for, such as fishing in stormy weather, delaying vessel maintenance, or heading out to sea in a boat laden with too much heavy fishing gear.

Traditional fishery-management programs open and close fishing seasons on specific days. By contrast, catch shares work on a quota system, under which fishermen have a longer window to harvest their predetermined share. That gives fishermen the luxury (and perhaps the life-saving option) of time.

The findings don’t surprise Scott Campbell Sr., who spent most of his 35-year career fishing the Bering Sea for king crab the way it used to be done: derby-style. Crab season would open, and regardless of weather, Campbell and his crew would be on the water, hoping to nab enough crab during the season’s brief window to keep his business afloat.

“If you can picture a four-day season for crab — and that’s the only four days you’re going to get — and a 50-knot storm blows in for 24 to 48 hours of that four days, well, a lot of boats didn’t stop fishing, because that was their only revenue stream for the whole year,” says Campbell. “It forced us to take unnecessary risks for financial survival.” (His son, Scott Campbell Jr., is a former star of Discovery Channel’sDeadliest Catch, about the hazards of the fishing industry.)

That kind of risk-taking has historically made fishing one of the nation’s most dangerous professions, with a fatality rate more than 30 times the U.S. average, according to the new report.

Today there are approximately two dozen state and federal catch share programs in the U.S. Most launched in the last decade. However, derby-style fishing still exists in many U.S. regions, including the Pacific and Atlantic swordfish fisheries, the Northeast’s monkfish and herring fisheries, and the West Coast dungeness crab fishery.

Plenty of studies have looked at the environmental benefits of catch share programs — such as the reduction of bycatch, the ability to maximize the value of the catch, and direct impacts on the way fisheries are managed. But what makes this paper innovative is that it’s looking at actual risk-taking data, says the study’s author, Lisa Pfeiffer, an economist at the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

Pfeiffer examined the impact a catch share management program had on fishing safety by looking at the particularly data-rich West Coast sablefish fishery.

Read the full story at National Public Radio