Outer Banks fleet: Enforcement woes parallel Gloucester's

The Outer Banks of North Carolina, a 200-mile long sand-barrier island chain that is home to more than 2,000 commercial fishing boats, is very different from the eccentric rocky ports of New England.

But the federal fishery law enforcement regime is the same, and so are the complaints.

This is what fact-finders from the office of Todd Zisner, inspector general for the U.S. Department of Commerce, will learn when they move their national investigation into abusive law enforcement practices of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to North Carolina next week.

"On the Outer Banks," said Susan West, a reporter who writes for the Outer Banks Sentinel, "yes, I think the feelings are nearly universal."

She said the attitude of law enforcement, which is part of a regional regime based in Gloucester, is to treat the fishermen as if they are outlaws or serfs, subject to the whims of the lords and masters and entrapped over and over again by irreconcilable regulations that bring them fines and penalties out of proportion to the severity of the crimes.

The inspector general's teams will hear from fishermen and industry employees and officers at two sites — New Bern, a small city on the mainland on an inlet of Pamlico Sound, a vast sea east and inside the banks, and Wanchese, a fishing village on the banks themselves.

"Intimidation" is a constant quality of the federal-fisherman relationship, said Sean McKeon, president of the North Carolina Fisheries Association. He said the NOAA officers often behave like fictional "Smokeys" who enjoy using the authority of the badge.

West said her fishermen spend considerably more time than their New England brethren fishing in state waters because the entire sound is inside the 200-mile exclusive economic zone that begins three miles east of the most easterly coast, which is the banks themselves.

"They have a big distinction between the state and the feds," she said. "The feeling is the state folks can have a workable relationship and are easier to communicate with."

New England fishermen have registered similar complaints about the Byzantine regulations and the extreme penalties imposed for technical violations.

The presumption of the guilt of the fishermen in both regions by the same special agents and lawyers in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also has been widely reported.

McKeon told the Times the story of a North Carolina Fisheries Association member and his wife, "the salt of the earth," who had federal agents nearly burst into their home to deliver a Notice of Violation and Assessment of $47,000. After higher-ups were induced to look into the case, NOAA decided to drop it, but refused to notify the family that they had been cleared.

He told of a trawler who brought in a hold of 50,000 to 60,000 pounds of fish with a "hailweight" (estimated at sea) that proved 200 pounds less than actual weight on the scale.

"The trawler was given an "exorbitant fine," McKeon said. The Wanchese Seafood Co., which owned the boat, decided to settle rather than fight.

Looming for the fishermen, said McKeon, was the problem of winning a court fight in the Coast Guard administrative law judge system that NOAA contracts to use.

In North Carolina and in New England, many NOVAs are settled rather than fought.

In a 2008 letter to Congressman John Tierney, attorney Stephen Ouellette, who maintains a fishing industry practice that extends beyond the authority of the regional law enforcers based in Glousester and includes clients on the Outer Banks, said the regime functions as if "a fisherman is guilty until proven innocent beyond all reasonable doubt of his innocence.

"The penalties imposed have no relation to the 'harm caused,' nor do they take into account the actual economics of the fishery. Fines generally exceed a fisherman's annual earnings, and often their net work," Ouellette wrote.

"NOAA continues to exhibit its inability to deal with the day-to-day workings of fishermen ... and the enforcement issues are currently forcing more honest, hard-working fishermen from the fishery than the condition of the fishery itself," he continued.

A federal judge Monday imposed an injunction against NOAA's intention to shut down the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction before the infraction had been fully adjudicated. Judge Douglas Woodlock commented that imposing a penalty punishment before a finding is made in a case resembled "Gestapo justice."

The inspector general undertook the investigation into NOAA law enforcement after receiving a plea from U.S. Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry and the Massachusetts congressional delegation.

Similar requests were made by elected officials in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

The IG's teams were in Massachusetts two weeks ago, and New York this week.

"We will go wherever information relevant to the review takes us," Assistant IG Scott Berenberg told the Outer Banks Sentinel.

Richard Gaines may be contacted at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.

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