Reeling in deep-sea fishing scofflaws - 11/21/04

The lettering on one end of the boxlike structure reads "Rachel Nicole, Charleston, SC," while the name on the opposite end is "Bad Habits, Ft. Pierce, FL."

But unless the Cooper River rises well above flood stage, this strange-looking stand-in for the stern sections of two fishing boats isn't going anywhere.

"It's as close as we can come to the real thing," Petty Officer 1st Class Gilbert Gonzales, an instructor with the Coast Guard's Southeast Regional Fisheries Training Center at the former Charleston Naval Base, said last week. The Rachel Nicole-Bad Habits is an 80-foot mockup that resembles the sterns of two deep-sea fishing boats hammered together, front-to-front. It sits beneath a shelter near the Coast Guard pier at the old naval base.

The training center's instructors use the mockup to teach Coast Guard crews how to enforce the nation's often complicated deep-sea fishing laws. It's a job that's getting more attention now that the Coast Guard has received additional resources in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Roughly 600 Coast Guard members from the service's cutters and stations around the United States will attend the center's courses this year, either in Charleston or at their homeports.

Even the Coast Guard's helicopter crews are receiving a short course on what to look for when they fly over a fishing boat at sea. If something looks out of place, a radio call can send a cutter to inspect the fishing boat.

What the crews are learning can be seen in the service's efforts to protect sea turtles that usually die when snagged in a shrimper's nets. A recent decrease in the number of dead sea turtles found on the state's beaches has some experts hoping that an increase in law enforcement, boosted by the Coast Guard's increase in resources, is paying off.

"Understandably, the enforcement of our fishing laws hasn't gotten the attention it had before 9/11," said Coast Guard Lt. Eric Johnson, the training center's commanding officer. "But enforcement affects everyone, the world, or at least that part of the world that relies on fish."

South Carolina falls within Coast Guard District 7, which also includes Georgia, Florida, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. According to the training center's executive officer, Lt. j.g. Kevin Saunders, the number of violations the Coast Guard handed out in the district increased from 24 in 2003 to 42 in the year that ended Sept. 30.

The majority of those violations involved the misuse of TEDs, or turtle exclusion devices.

Although it's too early to detect a trend, the increase in the number of TED violations written from 2003 to 2004 could be good news for the sea turtle population, according to Sally Murphy, a biologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resources.

"In 2001," Murphy said, "over 30 percent of the strandings," or dead sea turtles found on the state's beaches, "were large, adult turtles," the type that usually die because they've been snagged in a shrimper's net. "This year, there's only been one (adult) stranding."

Murphy agrees that a two-year span is too short a time frame to link the increase in the number of violations written by the Coast Guard with the drop in the number of dead turtles.

Still, "it intuitively says the more citations, the more compliance and the fewer dead turtles," she said.

Prescott Brownell, a biologist with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service, said he, too, hesitated to "put a whole lot of stock in the change of numbers. But whenever there's an increase in enforcement, people are bound to pay more attention to the rules."

At the mockup, two teams of Coast Guard members were learning how to inspect a trawler. Chief Petty Officer Bob Martin led one of the teams aboard the Rachel Nicole half of the structure. Retired Chief Petty Officer David Millman played the role of the trawler's captain.

The first inspection emphasizes safety, but Martin also asks Millman if he has any weapons. Millman says "yes" — in this case a knife — and Martin tells the students they should expect to find weapons aboard.

Weapons aren't illegal even though certain types of fish are, Martin said. The boarding team must take precautions.

Eventually, the boarding team examines the boat's documents and its engine room and hold, and the fish that have been caught. And the boat's nets, which must have TEDs installed correctly.

Each TED violation carries a fine that often starts at $300.

In 1988, South Carolina became the first state to require shrimpers to use TEDs in the state's coastal waters, Murphy said.

"I think most South Carolina shrimpers now believe (TEDs) are part of their equipment."

Terry Joyce covers the military. Contact him at 745-5857 or at tjoyce@postandcourier.com.

Source: http://archives.postandcourier.com/archive/arch04/1104/arc11212032459.shtml