Posted by student T on July 03, 2004 at 20:13:44:
In Reply to: Re: Abalone poachers sent to prison posted by Chris on July 03, 2004 at 15:35:32:
In medo cnty, the urchin economy has lost it's market price. I frequent Albion, Mendo, FtBragg often. Kept seeing this boat with hooka, outfitted like an urchin picker, but NOT. No catch ever came on board. These guys would be down for long times - no obvious catch ... somehow they were bilging it though I suspect. I figured they were ab poachers. Lot a guys around Albion willing to look the other way ... birds of a feather? Everytime I'm on the north coast lately I had been seeing them. 450+ abs for a single day's take. If this boat and these guys are the one and the same, then they were hauling daily over 6mo to a year. Tip of the ice berg, I'd say. Going to be interesting if I DON'T see them around any more. I'm delicately and definitely going to ask around. Somebody's buying the catch - making the market for the poachers, sign of the times. And it's not just abs being poached up there ... lots of other natural resources too ... nobody's that blind. Some real issues over there. Big money. Lots of fingers in the pie.