Saving Seafood

HANK SOULE: Revitalizing waterfront is still up to sectors and Carlos Rafael

July 9, 2018 — Carlos Rafael misreported his groundfish catch, and in its piece “Time for NOAA to let Sector IX fish again,” the Times is misreporting the facts.

First, NOAA didn’t calculate, as the piece states, that Rafael misreported just 72,000 pounds of grey sole. He openly admitted to stealing over 10 times that amount, of several different fish stocks. Rather, NOAA has apparently calculated that all but some remaining grey sole has been repaid, with quota seized earlier to cover the debt.

Second, neither Sector IX nor Sector VII has submitted a plan to return to fishing. Sector IX purged itself of nearly every vessel and permit enrolled there, retaining the bare minimum required to maintain legal status. It submitted an operations plan — which explains how a sector and its boats will track and report their quotas — which states that Sector IX has no immediate intent to resume fishing.

Sector VII is even more explicit. It absorbed the many Rafael vessels and permits shunted from Sector IX under the condition that they “will be enrolling as a non-active member and will not be authorized to fish” until Carlos Rafael sells them. In fact, Sector VII explicitly requested NOAA’s help to DENY those vessels permission to harvest.

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

Despite guilty plea, Carlos Rafael continues to fish

August 14, 2017 — Gloucester fisherman and vessel owner Vito Giacalone is the chairman of governmental affairs, and sits on the board of directors of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, the umbrella organization that oversees a dozen sectors, including Rafael’s. Up until 2016, Rafael was also a coalition board member.

Giacalone believed that Rafael was simply too big to be allowed to fail, that his sector worked with NOAA to enact changes — including bringing in new board members and a new enforcement committee — that allowed them to stay in business.

Rafael’s vessels control considerable groundfish quota, up to 75 percent of what New Bedford holds, according to New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, and Rafael has said he has 280 employees.

“You don’t have to be too imaginative to see that that is an enormous collateral impact as soon as that operation is stopped in its tracks,” Giacalone said, estimating that as many as 80 fishermen would be immediately out of work.

“I wish Carlos Rafael had thought about that before he did what did,” said Hank Soule, manager of the Sustainable Harvest Sector in South Berwick, Maine.  “The bottom line is New Bedford is the richest port in the U.S. The loss of his groundfish boats won’t devastate the port.”

NOAA is reportedly working with Rafael’s legal team on an agreement that would have him selling off his vessels and permits and leaving fishing forever, including scallop and lobster vessels not involved in the fish smuggling scheme.

At least 13 vessels are scheduled to be forfeited to the government as part of the plea deal and Giacalone thinks NOAA may be trying to maintain the value of the assets by keeping them fishing.

“I think it would be clumsy of the sector to cause collateral damage that could be excessive to innocent third parties,” Giacalone said.

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

HANK SOULE: Rafael: Punishment should fit the crimes

May 9, 2017 — New Bedford fishing mogul Carlos Rafael has now pleaded guilty to a suite of felonies including tax evasion, smuggling fish to shore and cash offshore, false federal reporting, and evading quotas. The Justice Department has worked up a plea deal including four years in prison and seizure of some boats and permits. That suffices for the cash-related crimes, and thanks goes to law enforcement for their long, hard work and the penalties imposed. But it’s not enough.

Rafael has a multi-decadal history of lawbreaking. In 2016 the Boston Globe reported, “Rafael has a history of crime related to his business. He served a six-month prison term for tax evasion in the 1980s and was charged with price-fixing in 1994, though he was acquitted in that case, according to court records. He was also convicted of making false statements on landing slips for commercial fishing vessels in 2000 and was sentenced to probation, according to court records.”

That’s not the half of it. The National Maine Fisheries Service has record of 20 separate admitted violations over the last two decades involving Rafael’s vessels and corporations. They include sub-legal net mesh sizes, missing fishing day declarations and under-counting, quota violations, false reporting, and concealing illicit catch. The boats and scams varied but they all have one common thread: The name “Rafael” stamped on the corporate documentation.

It is no stretch to stipulate that this record, along with the recent case at hand, constitutes prima-facie evidence of repeated, willful, and egregious criminal activity on the part of Rafael. These violations caused unknown harm to fishery resources — by statute, property of the people of the United States — and to all the law-abiding fishermen who have suffered under increasingly stringent regulations (or been forced out of the business entirely). The question at hand is: How to protect the victims and environment alike from this serial offender?

Here’s the rest of the story: In addition to the 13 vessels and permits to be seized, Rafael has another eight vessels and 25 permits still enrolled in the groundfishery. The government has not proposed to restrict those vessels in any way. There are no known sanctions on the offending captains. No additional monitoring of those vessels is planned. In other words: It’s pretty much business as usual, and for Rafael while the loss of those 13 vessels is unfortunate, it’s just one of the costs of engaging in smuggling.

Read the full opinion piece at National Fisherman