A Tauranga orchard worker has been sentenced to 150 hours of community work for selling paua illegally collected from rocks around the base tracks of Mauao.
Raymond John Ransfield, 37, pleaded guilty to a charge of selling paua taken in contravention of the Fisheries Act when he appeared in the Tauranga District Court yesterday.
This charge attracts a maximum fine of $250,000 and/or a community-based sentence.
The court heard that on the afternoon of January 28 last year Ransfield gathered some kina, mussels and paua while free diving around Mount Maunganui.
Ransfield and his partner then drove to a takeaway shop in Tauranga where he offered to sell the seafood to the shop owner who declined.
However, an associate of the owner agreed to buy a plastic shopping bag full of paua and mussels from Ransfield for $70.
The exchange, which took place in the rear carpark of the shop, was witnessed by a member of the public who phoned the Ministry for Primary Industries' POACHER line.
The transaction was also captured on a nearby CCTV camera.
This is not the first time Ransfield has been before the courts for fisheries offending.
Ministry of Primary Industries prosecutor Mark Nicholson told Judge David Cameron that in 2010 Ransfield was convicted and fined $2000 for possessing 85 undersized paua.
Nicholson said on this occasion Ransfield did not have a permit to gather shellfish from around the rocks near the base track of Mauao.
Because some of the seafood was onsold, the Ministry was unable to say for certain whether any of the paua and mussels collected and sold were undersized, he said.
Nicholson said given this was Ransfield's second fisheries prosecution, a 200 hours' community work sentence as a starting point was warranted.
Lawyer Tony Balme said he could not take issue with the proposed sanction but urged the judge to give his client the full 25 per cent discount for his guilty plea.
Judge Cameron told Ransfield it was a "serious aggravating factor" that this was his second flagrant breach of the Fisheries Act, which was there to protect a valued resource.
The judge said he aimed to deter Ransfield and others from this sort of offending with the 150 hours' community work sentence he had imposed.
Some facts about ordinary paua (Haliotis iris):
It is a high-value shellfish which, because of its limited coastal habitat and sedentary nature, is susceptible to over-fishing.
It has poor reproductive ability - scientists believe this may happen once every five to 10 years. To breed successfully the species has to live in clumps and over-fishing severely impacts on their ability to reproduce.