After the Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week on a case in which a fisherman is charged with violating evidence for destroying undersize fish caught illegally, many news sites took this as an occasion for fish jokes.
Sam Frizell at TIME reported that “fish and crime have long been two arms of an octopus,” and that if you step on the Mafia’s toes “you can be sure you’ll ‘sleep with the fishes.'” (The case before the court does not involve the mafia.) An AP story in Politico began, “Not even the Supreme Court justices can resist a good fish story.” Ellen Rosen at Bloomberg wrote that the case will decide whether a law “can literally be used for a fishing expedition.”
Perhaps the worst of the bunch was Forbes, where Daniel Fisher led with this: “It was hard not to laugh as the mighty U.S. Supreme Court took up the case of the fisherman who faced as much as 20 years in jail for violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act by allegedly throwing undersized fish overboard.” I’m betting the fisherman managed not to laugh.
Some of the stories focused not on the Yates case itself, but on the implications for other cases and for law enforcement more broadly. Bloomberg and many others were interested in whether the Sarbanes-Oxley law, intended to apply to the destruction of documents in white-collar criminal cases, could apply to the destruction of fish. That is the issue before the court. Some focused on an unintended consequence of the court’s decision to hear the fishing case: A judge in Boston delayed the sentencing of two men convicted of impeding the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, pending the Supreme Court’s decision, because destruction of evidence was an issue in that case, too.
But out of all the coverage, one story–I tried Googling multiple ways, and I couldn’t find another–looked at the issues at stake when fishermen keep undersize fish. “Illegal fishing is a very serious problem,” wrote David Shiffman at the marine-science blog Southern Fried Science. “Over a billion people, most of whom are poor, depend on fish as a source of animal protein. The global fishing industry employs hundreds of millions of people around the world, and is worth tens of billions of dollars a year.”
Shiffman, who tweets as @WhySharksMatter, is a graduate student in Florida, where he studies shark conservation. Illegal fishing can have profound effects far beyond the seafood industry, he wrote. “Overfishing can result in the collapse of entire communities, as we saw with the Canadian cod collapse, as well as ecological devastation.”
This is one of many examples we’ve discussed at the Tracker over the years in which science writers–if they paid attention to the Sarbanes-Oxley law, for example–could bring a uniquely valuable perspective to the coverage.
There is more to science writing than microbiomes, asteroids, dinosaurs, and genomics. Sometimes even a Supreme Court case can give a science writer an opportunity to shine, and to make an important contribution to the coverage. Shiffman did good work here. It should be an inspiration to the rest of us.
-Paul Raeburn
I agree that the “fish” case should not be treated as a joke, but not for Paul’s reason that it should have led to a discussion of overfishing. Instead, the focus should have been where the Supreme Court justices went during oral argument — prosecutorial discretion. NOAA/NMFS, particularly in the New England area had a few years ago a huge problem with their enforcement efforts which by anyone’s standards went way overboard (no pun intended) by overcharging so fishermen would be forced into settlements rather than go to trial, and a number of rather questionable practices by enforcement agents and lawyers.
Apparently to correct this situation NOAA/NMFS decided control over prosecutions, so they didn’t turn into persecutions, had to have centralized control. So they decreed that no longer could their regional prosecuting attorneys exercise discretion, but all charging documents and settlement agreements needed to be run through Washington. Many protested that policy change arguing that every fishery, and therefore, every fishery violation was different in its seriousness. Punishment should fit the violation, and that was best handled on the local level.
Less than 2 years after this huge policy change, we get the case before the Supreme court where a prosecutor wants to sentence a fisherman up to 20 years for discarding how many undersized fish? What kind of fish were they. Were they an endangered or overly stresses species — we don’t know. But back to the Supreme Court Justices and their focus — which as I understand it was a serious abuse of prosecutorial discretion — okayed by those in Washington — again we don’t know. We do know, however, that NOAA/NMFS has regulated so many US fishermen out of business to where now 94% of the fish Americans eat are caught or grown by foreign nations. In most of those nations, there is no such thing as an “undersized” fish, because they are all eaten and harvested. Nor are the regulations to protect whales, seals, seabirds, turtles, and other creatures enforced by these foreign countries.
While your plea for sympathy to allegations of criminality is heard, it is unsubstantiated. The facts are not. This NOAA fisheries a/k/a NMFS have abused fishermen for years. During the regime from 1999 until present, good hardworking fishermen have been overcharged, both civilly and criminally. The whole industry was abused. Any research into this topic would educate you on this. As to the original case, these fish that were “so-called” short were measured by a state agency, untrained in the federal law covering the measuring. The FWC officer testified that he does NOT measure fish in accordance with federal law. NOAA received a document from the FWC expert that said if these fish had been measured properly they averaged over 20 inches, and that was frozen. This same FWC expert also agreed that fish shrink. So these so called “short” fish were all probably legal. We will never know because he did not measure pursuant to federal law. Fishing is civil, whether you like it or not. The only criminal statute is for harassing an observer. To try to put a man away for 30 years is insane You can spin this anyway you want, but the men and women abused, yes I said abused, by this agency and others, should be criminal. They are trying to feed their families and pay their bills just like anyone else. It is hard work and they take pride it in. Shame on you trying to spin this into something it is not.
Thank you. I guess what infuriates me the most that while this agency was running around getting this bogus indictment the head law enforcement agent was in front of Congress for shredding 80% of his files while under investigation by the Inspector General’s Office. This is a blatant Sarbanes-Oxley violation. The Inspector General wrote about this in his report. Where is the justice there? A fisherman can be charged for 3 missing fish yet the head LEO of the agency gets a raise and transfer. Really? Pathetic!
lol! Well of course its you!!! You wrote it, and It’s not bad for someone that admits its new ground.
Theres a wealth of information about the diabolical doings of this rougue agency. I’ll link a few things and you should be hot on the trail. One is Dennis Kucinich crawling up Chief Jones tailpipe. I was there that day.
It was great.
Look at the other videos on the side bar to find more.
We’re from the government and we’re here to shake you down
http://www.fishnet-usa.com/NOAA_OLE_GCEL%20Shakedown.htm
As far as Dave is concerned, I don’t care for scientists that have blogs that are partisan, pointing out that conservatives are ignorant when it comes to science because someone question one of his projects, which, by the way is just another of hundreds about fish that can change gender. The science community seems to be better at dredging grant money at times.
Best regards.
Thanks, Peter and borehead. The discussion here suggests there is much more to write about this story.