Fishing boat seized over catch misreporting

A commercial fisherman has had his $450,000 vessel forfeited to the Crown and been ordered to pay $10,000 for fisheries offences.

Patrick William Bloomfield, owner of the vessel Hemnestraal, and two masters he employed, John Ashley Chapman and Allan David Ravenswood, in Nelson District Court yesterday admitted charges of misreporting under the Fisheries Act.

Bloomfield had his vessel forfeited and was fined $10,000, Chapman was fined $5000, and Ravenswood, was fined $3000.

Crown prosecutor Craig Stevenson told the court that each year Bloomfield had to purchase or obtain sufficient annual catch entitlement (Ace) to cover his fishing activities.

If the masters caught any species that incurred a deemed value charge it was deducted from the value of the catch, and Bloomfield, Chapman and Ravenswood received less money for the catch, Mr Stevenson said.

Rather than incur deemed value charges, the masters had misreported some fish stock codes, so that if a fish species was caught in an area where no Ace was available, it was recorded as being caught in an area where ample Ace for that species was held, Mr Stevenson said.

In total the misreporting by the three men resulted in $16,209 of deemed values not being incurred.

Judge Tony Zohrab said there was a large degree of trust involved in the catch recording process and while Ravenswood had said things were tough in the fishing industry "if people keep abusing the quota management system in the way it's been abused here things are going to get a lot tougher".

- nzpa