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Pinching Poachers
the Vancouver Courier, May 15, 2002
Photo illustration: Randall Cosco
Here he comes again, Joanne Llewellyn says quietly, as she peers through her Night Vision spotting scope. She watches a man dressed in dark clothing and a baseball cap walk from the Jericho Beach pier to the shore. He pulls two crab traps from the water. A minute later, there's a loud smack as the traps hit the water again.
"He's got two crabs—small ones—one in each hand," Llewellyn whispers to fellow fishery officer Ken Green. The houses on the distant North Shore cast a dim light on the man at the edge of the water, but the two fishery officers sitting on the sand in front of a giant log are in shadow.
Llewellyn is young, with short blond hair, and wears a fleece jacket, blue jeans and white sneakers. Her senior partner, Ken Green, is a veteran fishery officer who has spent more than 20 years working with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. For tonight's mission, he swapped his regular police-style slacks for a pair of more casual camouflage pants. The two look like a couple on a midnight stroll to the beach-it's one of the reasons they like to patrol the beaches for shellfish poachers together. "An odd couple," Llewellyn calls them.
They watch the man take the crabs, wrap them in newspaper and stash them along the rocks by the side of the pier, recording everything in their notebooks. They've seen him catch six crabs-two more than the daily limit-and he's using four traps, twice as many as permitted.
This man is one of many poachers who go to beaches and parks in the Lower Mainland year-round to catch shellfish. The most popular spots include the Tsawwassen ferry terminal, Barnet Marine Park in Burnaby, Cates Park in North Vancouver and Ambleside Park in West Vancouver. Crab poaching is a problem in part because of the risk to human health-although consuming illegal crab isn't as risky to your health as eating bivalves such as clams and oysters, if it's not stored properly, dangerous levels of bacteria can develop.
A bigger problem is the risk that poachers will reduce the crab population to unhealthy levels. Dungeness crabs are an important product in B.C., and although their numbers are considered stable, DFO says the amount caught by fishers along the coast has been in decline since 1993. Fishers must throw back Dungeness crabs under 165 millimetres, and Red Rock crabs smaller than 115 millimetres-scientists believe by the time it reaches that size, it's likely had a chance to reproduce at least once. Female Dungeness crabs rarely reach 165 millimetres, so according to the regulation, they should be thrown back into the water, where they can continue producing eggs. When large quantities of undersize crabs are harvested, the population can go into decline.
Last year, 325 charges were laid in the Lower Mainland for illegal harvest of crabs, for taking more than the daily limit or for taking undersize crabs. Poachers will often take bagfuls of small crabs, some only a few inches in size.
"We asked some of these individuals harvesting these small crabs, 'What do you do with them?'" says DFO Detachment Supervisor Herb Redekopp, sounding exasperated. "They just crush the whole crab and make a bouillabaisse, a soup, out of it. It's the only explanation that we've found as to why they would harvest such small animals."
At Jericho Beach, the two fishery officers spy an older man leaving the dock with a full-looking backpack. Green follows him, while Llewellyn stays to keep an eye on the first poacher. Green walks through the trees and sees the man hide his bag in the bushes and walk away. The Fishery Officer approaches the man, pulls out a badge and identifies himself.
Photo: Randall Cosco
"How many crabs do you have in your bag?" "Four crabs," says the man, wearing faded corduroy pants and sporting a thin mustache. Green opens the backpack and sees four plastic bags, each full of crabs. He places the man under arrest, handcuffing him and searching for weapons before removing the cuffs. They head back to the officer's van, where Green reads him his rights, while another fisher translates for him in Ilocano, a Filipino language. Green opens up the plastic bags and pulls out the Dungeness crabs one by one, unwrapping them from the newspaper and laying them belly up on the grass next to the parking lot. They wriggle their claws and legs as Green measures them with a white plastic measuring stick under the glare of the van's headlights. All 19 of them are under the legal size of 165 millimetres.
"Why so many crabs?" asks Green.
"I don't know," says the man quietly.
"Hoping you wouldn't get caught?"
The man doesn't respond. Green issues him a ticket for $1,000 and collects the crabs in a big plastic bag. These lucky ones will escape this time and be dumped back into the water.
Some people poach shellfish just to bring some food home for the family. Others are Downtown Eastside drug addicts who catch crab along the waterfront to sell to nearby markets. A significant portion of poachers, however, are seasoned criminals who make a living selling illegally caught marine life. Redekopp says some groups use decoy vehicles, lookout spotters, multiple vessels and mobile radios. They don't want to give away the location of their traps with flags, so they use GPS equipment to find them. "Many of the individuals that we apprehend have a long list of criminal priors-theft, fraud, break and enters, gang affiliations, drug offenses. It's just another way they make money to feed their vices, their habits."
The product ends up being sold to restaurants, shops and fish processing plants-34 Lower Mainland outlets were charged last year with possession of illegally caught fish or shellfish. Some of the catch even ends up being sold to the public from vans along the roadside. Two years ago, the Only Fish and Oyster Caf‚ in the Downtown Eastside was fined $12,000 after inspectors found more than 100 undersized Dungeness crabs, as well as 18 sockeye and 246 Manila clams without documentation of legal sale. In 1999, the McKenzie Fish Company, a seafood retailer at 49th Avenue and Knight Street in Vancouver, was fined $6,000 for having 86 undersized crabs and various types of fish of dubious origin. DFO officers found a freezer full of rotting fish, and after a visit from health inspectors, the shop closed down.
Redekopp says the majority of people caught with large amounts of undersize crabs and clams are Vietnamese or Chinese. The DFO posts signs describing fishing regulations on beaches in four languages and arranges for information to be published in the Chinese media. The department also has a Vietnamese-speaking officer on staff.
Last November, a two-week surveillance operation busted two suspected crab poaching rings operating out of Jericho Beach and Burrard Inlet. Twenty-eight people were fined a total of $10,000 and one individual's car was seized. In extreme cases, repeat offenders can be sentenced to jail time. Last November, a man was sentenced to 31 days in prison after being caught three times harvesting crab in the closed area of the Burrard Inlet, where crab fishing is closed to prevent vessels from interfering with the passage of ships.
Redekopp says despite the deterrents, it's difficult to reduce the amount of poaching.
"Normally, we find when we make a concerted effort for a significant time period, one species in a particular area, then people trafficking another species become more bold," says Redekopp, who is one of eight fishery officers covering the entire Lower Mainland. "We're kept hopping."
Belcarra Regional Park has developed another system of defense against poachers. Beach Keepers is a GVRD-run program that trains volunteers to keep an eye out for illegal aquatic activity. Nikki Higgs was a high school student when she started volunteering for the newly formed group six years ago. Now 24, she works as a park interpreter for Beach Keepers, teaching high school kids and other volunteers about shellfish regulations. Participants in the program go on four-hour daytime shifts, wearing bright purple T-shirts and hats and talking to people catching shellfish.
"They watch what's happening," says Higgs. "If people aren't measuring their crabs, they'll ask if they know they have to measure them. They'll ask if they have a fishing license. They're not there to enforce anything, but they can take down a license plate number and description and phone in a report to the DFO."
The 24-hour Observe, Record and Report line takes calls from members of the public who see suspicious activity taking place on the water. Last year the phone line received 1,731 fisheries related calls in B.C. and the Yukon, the majority about the poaching of fish and shellfish. Higgs says one common problem in Belcarra Regional Park is poachers will take off the crabs' claws and throw them back in the water.
"The claws have the majority of the meat, and some people think they can get away with it easier if they just take them," Higgs explains. "But the crabs don't have any teeth-they shred their food with their claws. They also can't fight and can't protect themselves without them."
She says many of the park's regular crabbers who obey the fishing regulations are Asian. However, sometimes the language barrier means people aren't aware of the restrictions. "We've noticed that when you go into stores, you don't have to have a license to buy traps. People don't realize you need a fishing license. You can buy it and take it to a park, and it has no information with it."
The Beach Keepers program is useful in educating small time crabbers who don't know the rules, but its patrols don't catch experienced poachers, who sneak into the park at night when it's closed. There's no equivalent group in Vancouver, although Fishery Officer Ian Mann is developing a program in the Lower Mainland aimed at recreational divers. Dive Watch will work with the Underwater Council of British Columbia as well as dive clubs, shops, and classes to teach divers the rules of the sea. Mann wants to encourage them to report violations to the Observe, Record and Report line. Underwater poachers can scoop up crabs and abalone from the ocean floor; some of them also take scallops, geoduck clams and even octopuses.
Back at Jericho Beach, it's around two thirty in the morning and Llewellyn has been watching the poacher for almost three hours. The man has been returning every 15 minutes or so to check his traps, stashing his loot in several locations. The fishery officers normally wait until the person gathers up all their loot to go home, but this man shows no sign of stopping and could be there all night. Even though the officers saw him using too many traps and catching too many crabs, he could argue in court that it was too dark for the fishery officers, sitting 100 feet away, to be certain it was him. He could say someone else put the crabs there, or that he was planning on throwing the undersized ones back. So after three hours of surveillance, the officers decide to pack up and head back to the van. But they'll be back another night—this time starting later—to try to catch him.