Two Baltimore County men face nearly a million dollars in fines after they’re caught stealing hundreds of pounds of striped bass. It happened on the Patapsco River.
A rockfish poaching bust nets two watermen, Terry Myrick and John Messenger, landing them in hot water Tuesday.
“They exceeded their daily catch limit,” said Joe Offer, Maryland Natural Resources Police.
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And because they didn’t play by the rules, police say the pair face fines in excess of $400,000. That’s a maximum fine of $2,500 per fish for exceeding their daily harvest by 532 pounds.
532 lbs? At 5-10 lbs each, that's not just an absent minded mistake. And it's a reasonably sure bet that it wasn't the first time they had kept extra fish. Of course, in the future, with
MD going to a per fisherman quota with no daily limit, this would not necessarily be a crime, as long as it was not outside their annual allotment.
“The people that are going out there working honestly, it gives them a black eye,” said Robert Brown, president of the Watermen’s Association.
Three years ago, 13 million pounds of fish were found in poachers’ nets. State officials shut down the rockfish season early to protect the species from overfishing.
“It killed us. It killed our winter’s work,” a waterman said at the time.
And the Watermen’s Association says they’re not in the clear yet.
“The following year, we were deducted 10 percent of our catch in case somebody did break the law,” Brown said. “The next year it was down to five percent so it’s down to 2.5 percent this year.”
They should base the assessment for poaching at 100 times the lbs intercepted by the anti-poaching efforts, assuming only 1% of the illegal catch is actually detected.
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