Thursday, May 18, 2017

Rare B.C. abalone easy pickings for unscrupulous poachers

Rare B.C. abalone easy pickings for unscrupulous poachers

LARRY PYNN, VANCOUVER SUN  
Northern abalone can spend their entire lives within a pond-sized patch of B.C. coastline.
And that is where their problems begin.
The rarest and most expensive B.C. seafood is also easy pickings for unscrupulous poachers, who, with a little local knowledge and scuba gear, can decimate a patch of abalone in a matter of hours or days.
Since 1990, northern abalone in B.C. have been strictly off-limits to harvest or possess as Ottawa seeks to rebuild stocks. But that hasn’t stopped criminals from continuing to target this gourmet seafood, its value seeming to increase as populations become ever more precarious.
As The Vancouver Sun learned during a lengthy probe of the illegal abalone trade, those criminal connections can extend throughout North America and include different species of wild and endangered abalone that are all valued as a delicacy, mainly in Asian communities at home and abroad.
Ottawa’s most wide-ranging abalone-poaching investigation to date — dubbed Operation Awabi, after the Japanese word for abalone — began by chance during the inspection of a shipping container bound for China.
No one knew that one event would lead more than two years later to a series of ultimately successful abalone prosecutions that concluded only recently in California and B.C., and send a strong message to those who would purchase abalone on the black market for personal gain.
As federal fisheries officer Nicole Gallant begins the story, she fielded that first call from Canada Border Services Agency on Jan. 26, 2007, at her downtown Vancouver office on Burrard Street.
The container inspection had turned up mislabelled fish products — sea cucumbers passed off as less-valuable red snapper fillets and salmon collars — in an apparent attempt to avoid higher federal export tariffs.
“Sea cucumber is highly valued,” confirms Gallant, officer in charge of a special investigation unit. “They figured the product they had in there was about $125,000, whereas red snapper fillets [would probably bring] $25,000 to $30,000.”
The container held no abalone. But suspicious authorities felt justified in conducting an inspection of the two businesses involved in the mislabelling, Momoji Seafood Packaging & Exporting Ltd. and Solid State Enterprises Canada Ltd., both located in Richmond but otherwise unconnected.
“We’d never heard before of these fish plants,” Gallant said, yet another reason to enquire further.
A team of investigators and inspectors from Victoria and Ottawa first visited the Solid State warehouse on Vulcan Way on Feb. 6, 2007, where they discovered abalone in white waxed cardboard boxes labelled as a product of Mexico exported by Zenith Trading Corporation, a Los Angeles-based seafood trading company.
In theory, perfectly legal.
In reality, authorities had their doubts. “The colour of it, the shape and size, it just didn’t look right,” Gallant confirmed. “It wasn’t professionally processed.”
Officers returned with a search warrant the next day, on Feb. 7. “The whole upper floor was chopsticks,” Gallant recalled. “They were cooking crab within this business with all the doors closed on a small propane burner.
“It was interesting.”
Despite appearances, clearly there was money to be made here. Manager Wun Tai Li had “five grand” in cash on her from selling abalone to a local restaurant, Gallant recalls.
Samples of the abalone were sent to the federal Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo for DNA testing. Normally it’s a six-week turnaround. These tests were fast-tracked in three days, reflecting the importance of the case.
Seven species of abalone are found on the west coast of North America — red, pink, black, green, white, northern and flat — some of which are legally harvested in certain jurisdictions and others fully protected.
Abalone farms produce limited product, mainly red abalone, although consumers pay a premium for wild stocks just as wild salmon commands a higher a price than farm-raised.
The DNA tests determined Solid State had four species of abalone — northern, white, pink, and green — two of which took the investigation to the next level.
Although it is legal to sell Mexican pink and green abalone, not so northern and white.
Northern, also known as pinto abalone in the U.S. for its pearly iridescent inner shell, is found mainly off Alaska and B.C., with lesser populations as far south as Mexico’s Baja coast. Both the meat and shell have been off-limits to harvesting and possession in B.C. since 1990, including to aboriginal people.
The species is rated endangered by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, and threatened under the federal Species At Risk Act, which obliges Ottawa to protect and enhance populations.
White abalone, which lives off California and Mexico, has been declared endangered by the U.S. government in California since 2001, its numbers reduced by 99 per cent since the 1970s, based on surveys in the southern state.
Canadian authorities got on the phone to their counterparts in California.
They tipped them off about Zenith Trading Corporation, then proceeded to inspect the second Richmond company, Momoji, at its Clarke Place warehouse on Feb. 21.
More abalone samples were sent to the Pacific Biological Station for genetic testing. The confirmation of more northern — but not white — abalone led to a search warrant of the premises and seizure of product on March 2.
“It’s a real easy way to say, ‘Well, we’re selling Mexican abalone,’” Gallant said of the tactics being used. “But in it is the illegal product. It’s just a way for them to blend it in.”
The investigation might have ended with charges against Solid State and Momoji under the Species At Risk Act. But authorities were still left wondering whether the northern abalone found in the boxes labelled product of Mexico actually originated there or were substituted somewhere along the line.
To find out, Gallant and fisheries officer Art Demsky flew to California a month later to meet with law enforcement officers with the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service and California Department Fish and Game in San Diego and Los Angeles, and to participate in a search of the Zenith Trading plant and the home of its owner, Henry Chan.
They also learned that U.S. border officials only weeks earlier had seized green and pink abalone from a Mexican man associated with Zenith Trading.
“It was found on the engine block of the truck,” Gallant says. “It was tied in two grocery bags. We were there in April and it was hot. You can imagine going across with something like that.
“That made us really think: They’re smuggling it across the Mexican border and it’s getting into Canada somehow. Now there’s a huge health issue, right.”
Gallant said the Mexican citizen claimed he was going to a baseball game and that the abalone was for personal consumption. “It didn’t make any sense. Why would you do that?”
The Canadian officers’ visit also involved an unlikely trip across the Tijuana border to visit the two processing plants on the Baja peninsula listed on the boxes of abalone found in Richmond.
No tequila and mariachi bands this time around.
On April Fool’s Day 2007, the two officers purposefully boarded a bus for a two-hour journey south to the port city of Ensenada.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Gallant recalls with a smile. “It was a good bus, not a chicken bus. We were warned not to take a rental vehicle across because they see U.S. plates and they rear-end you for insurance.”
The Mexican government even provided a biologist to show the Canadian officers around.
“We didn’t find one single northern abalone,” Gallant continued. “The Mexican commercial fishery for abalone is very well run. They have to have proper licences, there’s a lottery, a quota system — extremely well done.”
The visit resolved the fact that northern abalone found at Momoji and Solid State did not originate in Mexico, and that it had been put into the boxes somewhere along the line in hopes authorities wouldn’t notice.
“How did the northern abalone get in those boxes?” Gallant continues to ask. “It had to happen somewhere else. We were able to prove it did not come from Mexico.”
Gallant has still not answered that nagging question. But she has a pretty good idea.
Based on numerous convictions related to abalone poaching over the years, fisheries officers have come to learn that the illegal harvesting tends to be done by residents of coastal communities, both aboriginals and non-aboriginals, some with experience as commercial underwater harvesters.
“My gut feeling is there’s fewer people involved, but the people who are involved are bigger and better,” said Robert Martinolich, chief of enforcement operations for federal fisheries in B.C.
Officers figure illegal abalone is mainly destined for Vancouver’s ethnic Chinese market, where a premium price is paid for wild over farmed abalone: $35 to $55 versus $6 a pound wholesale. “The market is here, in Chinatown and the Asia restaurants,” Gallant said. “The majority of the product is coming into Vancouver.”
In the biggest abalone poaching case to date in B.C., three Haida harvested approximately 11,000 abalone over just two and a half days in the Port Edward area near Prince Rupert.
In April 2007, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Doug Halfyard sentenced ringleader Stanley McNeill, a member of the Pacific Urchin Harvesters Association, to 12 months imprisonment to be served in the community, plus a $20,000 fine and prohibition from scuba-diving for five years. His 10.5-metre fishing vessel, the Zombie Wolf, was forfeited, along with his dive gear and Ford pickup truck.
McNeill’s younger brother, Daniel, along with Randall Graff, who lived with the McNeills’ sister, were each sentenced to four months in prison in the community, 80 hours of community work, and a $10,000 fine, with restrictions on scuba diving for two years.
The case disheartened a first nation that has been working hard on co-management of abalone — a traditional food item — with Ottawa for several years on Haida Gwaii, the Queen Charlotte Islands.
“It’s pretty disappointing when something like this happens,” confirmed Guujaaw, president of the Council of the Haida Nation. But he also argued one must not dismiss the fact the federal government allowed commercial harvesters to decimate abalone stocks prior to enacting the 1990 ban.
“They come off as the great conservator, but they fished those things to near extinction,” he said from his Skidegate office. “That’s what wiped them out.”
The 11,000 abalone poached in just this one case compares with an entire abalone population on the B.C. coast estimated at roughly 420,000.
Not surprisingly, plundered stocks remain critically imperilled on the B.C. coast.
Federal shellfish biologist Laurie Convey says abalone populations at dozens of select survey sites on the central coast have declined overall by 83 per cent from 1978 to 2006 and 81 per cent on the east side of the Queen Charlotte Islands from 1978 to 2007.
They’re down by 40 per cent since the fishing closure in 1990.
“All evidence points to the illegal harvest,” Convey said, noting there’s been no evidence of disease causing the decline and that abalone live in remote areas unaffected by development. “Even small harvests can leave an area bare because they depend on a critical density for reproduction.”
Despite these declines, there are signs of juvenile abalone increasing by 29 per cent and 35 per cent, respectively, in the two regions since 1990.
“There is some hope, provided those animals are allowed to grow up,” Convey said.
That’s where the successful prosecution of the two Richmond companies, both handled by federal prosecutor Ramona Roberts, is helping to provide a deterrent message.
Momoji pleaded guilty in May 2009 and was fined $35,000 by Judge Jane McKinnon for possessing an estimated 2,000 northern abalone. All but $500 of the fine went to research and recovery of wild abalone stocks.
Momoji’s Sandy Suet Fung Li had earlier been fined $2,500 after pleading guilty to charges of operating a seafood processing plant without a licence, an investigation that involved the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Solid State’s Li, whose criminal record included a nine-month conditional sentence for her part in a marijuana-growing operation, pleaded guilty and was fined $25,000 by Judge Ron Fratkin in August 2008. A total of 118 illegal northern abalone had been found in that case.
The false labelling of the sea cucumbers that touched off the investigation also yielded $2,000 fines in each case.
For the two Richmond companies, Operation Awabi seems to have had an impact beyond the courtroom.
The Sun visited the Momoji warehouse and found the place locked with all the appearances of having been shut down. The company is no longer in good standing with the B.C. registrar of companies.
As for Solid State, Li continues to share storefront space at Westminster Highway and No. 3 Road with friend Kimberly Liu, a certified general accountant and immigration consultant. Liu said Li is no longer in the seafood business and instead focuses on restaurant supplies such as chopsticks.
Li works from home now, not a warehouse. Asked if Li could be interviewed, Liu said she has a poor grasp of the English language, although she can understand when people call to place a order.
“She understands that stuff,” Liu insisted.
Operation Awabi didn’t end with Momoji and Solid State.
Following up on the Canadian fisheries officers’ tip, the National Marine Fisheries Service successfully prosecuted Zenith Trading owner Henry Chan.
Chan pleaded guilty to one count under the Lacey Act of shipping illegally purchased abalone and one count under the Endangered Species Act of shipping endangered white abalone to Canada.
On Sept. 17 this year, he was fined $50,000 US in San Diego Federal Court, $10,000 of which went to the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Foundation for abalone research and education.
In an interview from her Los Angeles office, deputy special agent Martina Sagapolu said Chan had sold more than 10,000 kilograms of abalone to seafood business throughout California, Hong Kong, and Canada, but had documentation for the legal purchase of only 725 kilograms.
The Mexican national who smuggled abalone to Chan only had his border-crossing card revoked.
“We didn’t charge him,” Sagapolu confirmed. “We went after the bigger fish.”
Sagapolu gives Canada full credit for initiating the investigation. “It was great we were able to work together with Canada on something that was important to them. It just so happens they uncovered this other illegal activity taking place right here across the border.”
As for Gallant, she is hopeful Operation Awabi has a lasting impact on the illicit trade in abalone.
Fisheries officers proved they can enter a business and through DNA tests determine illicit abalone on site regardless of how someone might want to cover it up through false packaging, she said.
“We’re getting the word out. They’re very aware we’re watching.”
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