Nine People Charged With Illegally Catching and Selling Rockfish

A ring that trafficked in illegally caught rockfish from the Chesapeake Bay and Potomac River handled 600,000 pounds of the fish over four years, with a retail value between $3 million and $7 million, a federal law enforcement official said yesterday.

That was the first official estimate of the damage allegedly done by the group, which prosecutors say included fishermen and the owner of a Georgetown seafood market. Nine people have been charged so far after a four-year undercover operation that authorities called the largest-ever probe of illegal commercial fishing in the region.

State fisheries officials in Virginia and Maryland said yesterday that they had not yet been told how many rockfish the group took. They said the Chesapeake's rockfish population is still healthy overall. The fish is a rare success story for the bay, having rebounded from very low levels in the 1980s, thanks to restrictions on fishing.

"It's not a threat to the ecosystem. It's not a major threat to the striped bass [rockfish] population, either. But it's a significant amount of fish," said Bill Goldsborough of the nonprofit Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "You can't manage a fishery very effectively . . . if you're going to have rampant poaching like that."

In court documents, authorities say the fishermen circumvented limits on the catch of rockfish, in some cases under-reporting their catch or falsifying data about the way certain fish were caught. Authorities say some fish were caught in large nets, for instance, but they were reported as having been caught on hook and line. As a result, the fish were counted against a different state quota.

Authorities have also charged Robert Moore Sr., the owner of Cannon Seafood in Georgetown, in the case.

Thomas Abbenante, an attorney for Moore, said last week that Moore has closed the store and agreed to plead guilty to buying fish caught out of season.

All the defendants in the case were charged with violating the Lacy Act, a federal law that prohibits the creation of false records for fish and wildlife or transporting illegally harvested wildlife.

The law carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.

Authorities said the investigation is still going on.

Watermen's groups in Virginia and Maryland condemned the violations yesterday, saying they made life harder for law-abiding fishermen. But Larry Simns of the Maryland Watermen's Association said the investigation itself had made the problem of illegal fish-trafficking worse.

The new buyers, who turned out to be undercover agents, had paid high prices for the fish for so long that new fishermen were drawn in, he said.

"I don't condone any of that cheating, regardless of whether the feds created the market or not," Simns said. "I'm very upset that that many people were thumbing their nose at the law."