Surveillance scuttles fish cheats

Commerical fishermen David Day and Neil Moody had the simplest of plans to illegally catch and sell fish.

Their black-market scheme, which involved not declaring 95 per cent of their catch, started aboard a scruffy fishing boat in the isolated area of Waikino in the Bay of Islands and finished in a fish shop in Otara, South Auckland.

It took the Ministry of Fisheries two months of surveillance to gather the evidence that resulted in the two men and the owner of the fish shop pleading guilty this month to 24 offences.

Day was the director of the small commercial fishing company Northern Fisheries and Moody was his deckhand.

They used Day's fishing boat, the 10m Kuaka, to catch fish off the coast of the Bay of Islands.

Near the end of their fishing trips, Day, 54, and Moody, 42, would telephone Myung Ki Kim, the owner of Otara Fisheries, to arrange a meeting.

Day and Moody would discreetly load the fish - usually parore, flounder, snapper and kahawai - on to Moody's truck.

They would drive to a family member's house in Ruakaka where they would transfer the bins of fish to Kim's van.

Kim would pay them in cash and the men would give him false sales documents.

But despite the men's best efforts to keep their operation secret, someone reported them to the Ministry of Fisheries.

In July 2002, the ministry started a surveillance operation which lasted two months.

Ministry information shows the men ran the elaborate black market operation for about one year. During the ministry's surveillance, Kim bought 2500kg of fish.

Kim was charged with seven offences under the Fisheries Act, Moody with eight offences and Day with nine.

All three men pleaded guilty. Day and Moody were sentenced last week and fined $18,000 and $16,000 respectively.

Equipment worth more than $90,000 - including the Kuaka and three dories - was seized from the men.

Kim, who was sentenced in November last year, was fined $14,000 and had to forfeit the van he used to transport the fish, his cellphone and close to $1000 made from selling the illegal fish.

The ministry's Northland district compliance manager, Dave Turner, said the case was a serious abuse of the quota management system, which controls commercial fishing.

Under it, fishermen are required to record and report all fish taken so stocks can be managed and maintained.

Said Mr Turner: "They were not only ripping off the taxpayer, it was also a threat to fish stock."

A SIMPLE SCAM

* Two Bay of Islands fishermen would declare only 5 per cent of their catch under the quota system.

* The rest was trucked to a relative's property in Ruakaka for sale to an Otara fish shop owner.

* 2500kg of fish was sold during the Ministry of Fisheries' two-month surveillance.