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| Commercial abalone divers poaching abalone off the northern California coast |
The following is an incomplete list of individuals associated with commercial fishing who have been arrested and convicted for poaching Red Abalone off the central and northern California coast since the early 1990s. Understandably, commercial divers strongly object to the following information as being unfair and inflammatory. My response is that there is no intent to suggest all commercially-licensed divers are involved in large-scale poaching. At the same, I do not see how the financial motivations can or should be ignored. Commercial divers today make a living scouring the ocean floor for Sea Urchins while skipping over Red Abalone easily worth $50 and more each. In effect, the commercial divers are expected to pick up small change (Sea Urchins) while ignoring $50 bills laying all around them. Off San Miguel, there are thousands of those $50 bills just laying around. And, for the effort of a trip north, there are millions of $50 bills for the taking off the Sonoma and Mendocino coasts. The following list demonstrates that the temptation is just too much for too many.
It will be argued that a reopening of California's abalone fishery will reduce the pressures on commercial divers to poach northern California. This may or may not be true for the individuals allowed back into a reopened fishery. However, that reopened fishery will be necessarily small (San Miguel Island isn't but a few miles of coast) and, quite obviously, a number of commercial divers will be left out. For both groups, the reopened fishery will also reopen abalone processing in places like Santa Barbara and Morro Bay which will make it all that much easier to sell north coast Red Abalone illegally taken.
Details on these individuals and their operations is available here and here.
| 2004 | Curt Ward Joshua Holt |
Two commercial
divers were arrested when they landed 468 Red Abalone taken during 3 hours of
diving off the Mendocino coast. They are presumed to have used hookah gear
installed on the commercial dive boat they'd trailered up from southern
California and they intended sell their haul in Mexico. They admitted to six
other northern California-to-Mexico hauls of Red Abalone but evidence suggested
their admissions were shy of fully honest. They justified their activity by
claiming to the judge that CDFG Marine Biologists were overstating the risks to
California's abalone populations. 2 years State Prison, fines, forfeiture of
dive boat and gear and lifetime loss of fishing privilege. |
| 2000 | Joel Roberts | Member of the
Director’s Abalone Advisory Committee (commercial divers only) caught
poaching for Red Abalone at night off the Sonoma Coast. Widely viewed as a
“victim” of the 1997 fishery closure though he was under suspicion of
poaching the north coast long before the closure. 3 years state
prison. |
| 2000 | John Funkey | Arrested with Joel
Roberts. 3 months in county jail. |
| 1996 | Lance Robles | Arrested with
Weighhill and Contreras, Robles' commercial license had been revoked for life
earlier in 1996 by the Fish and Game Commission over violations in the Los
Angeles area. 1 year county jail. |
| 1996 | Timothy Contreras | Santa Barbara
individual caught working with Robles and Weighhill. County jail. |
| 1996 | Christopher Weighill | Santa Barbara
commercial fisherman caught working with Robles and Contreras. County
jail. |
| 1996 | Tom Monaghan | Commercial abalone
diver was arrested with 7 Red Abalone in possession that were taken from the
Fitzgerald Marine Reserve during the closed month of January. A false-bottom
SCUBA tank was used for covert transport of the poached abalone. He'd
apparently been poaching for quite some time. |
| 1994 | Van Johnson | San Diego commercial
fisherman and seafood processor out of San Diego considered the mastermind
behind a poaching operation estimated to have poached 1,000,000 pounds of Red
Abalone off the Sonoma County coast. 3 years state prison. |
| 1993? | various | Investigation of a
Point Arena bed and breakfast lodging that appeared to cater only to commercial
sea urchin divers and tenders led to prison for those involved in what turned
out to be an abalone for heroin operation. |
| 1990 | Darrell Tatman | Arrested after running down coast to San Francisco Bay with a load of abalone poached off the north coast and hidden in specially designed compartments required partial disassembly of of the boat to locate. 3 years state prison. |
Last Modified: January 21, 2006
