A Boston federal court sentenced the former captain of the ‘Bulldog’, a New Bedford based commercial fishing vessel for interfering with a US Coast Guard inspection of a fishing boat off the Massachusetts coast.
Thomas D. Simpson, 57, of South Portland, Maine, was sentenced to two years of probation, with the first four months to be served in home confinement with electronic monitoring and ordered to pay a $15,000 fine. In August 2018, Simpson pleaded guilty to one count of destruction or removal of property subject to seizure and inspection.
U.S. Attorney Andrew E. Lelling said that the captain’s conduct was careless and dangerous. When he ordered the ship’s nets cut loose, rather than simply reeled in, the steel cables securing the net swung violently across the boat, endangering not only the Coast Guard boarding team but his own crew, too.
My office is committed to prosecuting those who impede federal inspections, especially when they jeopardise the safety of law enforcement officers and bystanders.
U.S. Attorney stated.
Simpson was the captain of the fishing vessel Bulldog, a New Bedford based commercial fishing vessel and one of several fishing vessels owned by Carlos Rafael. On Sept. 25, 2017, Rafael was sentenced in federal court in Boston to 46 months in federal prison on a variety of charges related to the operation of his commercial fishing business.
On May 31, 2014, the Bulldog was engaged in commercial fishing off the cost of Massachusetts when the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) boarded the vessel to perform a routine inspection of the Bulldog and its fishing equipment. At the time of the boarding, the Bulldog’s net was deployed in the water and the crew was actively fishing. The USCG Boarding Officer encountered Simpson in the Bulldog’s wheelhouse and instructed Simpson to haul in the fishing net for inspection.
The fishing net is controlled from the wheelhouse by an electric winch, which Simpson activated, but instead of hauling the fishing net onto the vessel, he let out more of the cable which attaches the net to the vessel. When the USCG Boarding Officer realised that Simpson was letting the net out, he instructed Simpson to stop and to haul the net in. Simpson ignored the order and continued to let out cable until the net became detached from the Bulldog and sank.
The USCG and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hired a salvage company, at a cost of approximately $15,000, to retrieve the net from the ocean floor. An inspection of the net revealed that it had three distinct and separate layers of netting in violation of commercial fishing regulations. When two or more fishing nets are placed on top of each other, the size of the openings are reduced. The reduced size net openings hinder younger, smaller fish from being able to escape the net. The prohibition on double or triple lining fishing nets is intended to maintain the size and viability of the fishing stock and reduce over fishing.
