http://www.keynoter.com/news/20011205s02.html
Pair caught red-handed in Middle Keys waters
By Scott Fusaro sfusaro@keynoter.com
Two men convicted in September of molesting lobster traps were sentenced Monday in Monroe County Circuit Court in Marathon to two years in prison and three years probation.
Judge Ruth Becker called the evidence, presented at the trial of Pablo Fundora and Jorge Hernandez, "some of the more egregious facts" she has seen in a trap-robbing case in 11 years.
She also ordered the men to register with the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission any time either is upon Florida waters during their probationary periods.
"The evidence that you presented to the court, that the court is not deaf and mute to, is completely implausible," Becker said of the defendants’ claim to be pleasure cruising when they were caught molesting the traps of Marathon commercial fisherman Dan Yeider.
Rehabilitation is impossible when, she said, "you are completely in denial."
Prosecutor Pat McCullah, who requested the sentence handed down by Becker, repeated trial testimony that Yeider said he saw Fundora clad in scuba gear and with an arm inside one of Yeider’s wooden traps while Hernandez circled the trap in a boat and dumped crawfish overboard.
"They have no remorse. They came in here and basically accused the victim of a crime," said McCullah, referring to the defendants’ claim that Yeider tried to run them over with a boat when he encountered the defendants near his traps.
"Since the incarceration of these individuals, we have experienced a negligible amount of trap-robbing," Yeider told the court.
Even after the arrests of Hernandez and Fundora, Yeider said after the hearing, his traps were disturbed and lines were cut every week – until the pair was convicted and jailed.
Both defendants maintained their innocence Monday, even as their attorneys deferred to Becker for leniency.
If the accusations are true, Hernandez said through an interpreter, he should receive life in prison. His attorney, Carl Palomino, quickly tempered his remarks by adding that Hernandez was not trying to be confrontational, but that he was still irritated by the guilty verdict.
"It’s egregious if you believe a crime was committed. We don’t believe a crime was committed," Palomino said after the hearing in response to Becker’s comments about the "egregious facts."
"I don’t agree with the jury’s finding, but I respect it," he added.
At the sentencing, Palomino reminded Becker that Fundora was the diver and sentencing Hernandez to prison would only show "vindictiveness."
"Certainly, my client had no direct involvement in anything being done below the water," he said. "To send a man like this to prison is a complete waste of taxpayers’ money."
McCullah said vindictiveness was not involved, but rather in addition to a just punishment, a prison sentence would deter other would-be trap-robbers.
"He is a commercial fisherman. He knows better," said McCullah. "They’re stealing from their own."
Fundora’s brother, Rolando Fundora, told Becker that trap-robbing was "out of character" for his brother and attempted to shift focus from the incident.
"They want to make this case an example, and the Monroe County Commercial Fishermen [trade group] blames these two divers for the poor profitability of the fishermen in the Keys, when the real issue is the violations of trap certificates," he said after the hearing, blaming Yeider for such a violation.
Court records show Yeider received a citation seven years ago, but was never convicted.
"A clear message had to be sent," said Greg DiDomenico, executive director of the Monroe County Commercial Fishermen. "It’s so rare that we have a case this clear and we get a conviction and get good adequate sentencing."
There is a new kind of river rat
along the Halifax River, crab trap robbers. I work for Bill Wohlhuter, who owns
Port Orange Seafood. He is an experienced fisherman who depends on his hard work
pulling crab traps as soon as the sun comes up, seven days a week. For the past
few weeks his crab traps have been coming up empty. Someone has been robbing
these traps. Please mention something in your column about this.
-- Billie Roberts
River rats, eh? Raiding crab traps isn't just illegal, it's dangerous. People have gotten into all sorts of altercations over crab traps, including shootings.
I went out on the Halifax River on Tuesday morning with Bill Wohlhuter while he pulled some of his traps, and we talked about crab pot robbery. When I got to his shop at 6:30 a.m., he already had been up for two hours, preparing for a shipment of salmon that he was going to smoke later that day.
Crab pot theft isn't a new problem. Tales of feuding crabbers, territorial trappers and the encounters that occur when fishermen catch a thief red-handed in secluded waters are as old as the river.
People have had shots fired over their head or into the side of their boat, while others have had the motors blown off their boat by a shotgun. Crabbers have been known to ram boats for messing with their traps, or they lie in wait with a Q-beam spotlight and deer rifle.
Turf battles erupt between crabbers, too.
"One fellow had his traps stomped on and put out up on a hill, like, in other words, Stay out' ," Wohlhuter said.
Someone in New Smyrna Beach recently had 20 traps cut off of their floats. At Nassau Sound, somebody had 1,500 traps cut off in one night, Wohlhuter said.
Cutting traps off their floats is a horrible thing to do, Wohlhuter said, because they become "ghost traps."
"Ghost traps are worse than anything," he said. "They still kill and they're lost out there."
LAW CAN'T REALLY HELP
The Florida Wildlife Commission calls blue crab trap robbery a statewide problem that is made worse by the fact that it is difficult to prove. If the trap is empty, how can it be proven that there was anything in the trap to begin with?
Wohlhuter's simple answer: The bait has been eaten.
"There'll be a fresh sailors' choice in the trap with his head cut off. Now, he didn't lose his head in that trap all by himself."
Wohlhuter didn't report the recent run of suspiciously empty traps to the law because, he said, "Basically, it'd be a waste of my time, probably."
A sheriff once dismissed Wohlhuter's concerns about his traps being robbed by replying that, "They don't do it while I'm out there," Wohlhuter said.
Wohlhuter tries to keep it all in perspective, though, and he has a long view of the situation. He was working on a 40-foot sport-fishing boat when he was 9.
"I had to drive 'cause I was too small to lift the fish in," he said.
He's 51 now and knows fishing as well as anyone. He used to run gillnets for mullet. He's worked as a shrimper. He's gone for scallops, crabs, wreck fish, lobster, you name it.
And he knows if someone has been messing with his crab traps.
THEY DON'T JUST DISAPPEAR
Five of his traps disappeared last week -- stolen. He had three empty traps that had been moved a quarter mile. And no, the current did not take a crab trap weighed down with a 25-pound piece of rebar, half sunk into the muck on the river bottom, on a quarter-of-a-mile trip.
"Someone ran the traps up and dumped them when they were done unloading them," Wohlhuter said.
Wohlhuter gets up at 4 a.m. to check his traps and drives his bow-rigged flat-bottom boat from float to float with a flock of pelicans following him, waiting for him to throw out old bait.
He hoists heavy traps through the current that are loaded down with dogfish, stone crabs, blue crabs, shellfish, barnacles and even catfish. Then he has to shake the cumbersome traps until everything works its way out. And he's got more than 100 traps to check.
"It's hell when you pull them and they're empty," Wohlhuter said.
FWC law enforcement officer Mark Tharp has been patrolling the St. Johns River from Jacksonville to Lake George for 7 years. He said he's only caught two people stealing blue crabs during that time.
"All that Wild West stuff was back in the early '60s and '70s," Tharp said. "Some of the officers who were here before me were making arrests when people were blowing motors off boats, but the price of crabs has gone down and there's just not as much money to be made in (crabbing) anymore."
There are less problems now. Wohlhuter released nearly two-thirds of his crabs Tuesday because they weren't choice and he hasn't been selling out. But he said there still are places you can't put a trap to this day without getting into a disagreement with another crabber. So he's still guarding his crabbing secrets to stay a step ahead of any robbers.
He worries what might happen if he put someone out on the water to watch his traps and they caught somebody stealing. He doesn't want to get in trouble over what he called "a little party food."
Wohlhuter said, "You just put more traps out and say, They can't get em all.' "
This is a guy who chuckles at the suggestion that pulling crab traps is hard work and says he just likes seeing the sunset from the water. You'd have to get up pretty early in the morning to get a leg up on this crabber.
To report crab trap violations call the 24-hour toll-free Wildlife Alert Hotline at (888) 404-FWCC. Callers may remain anonymous and may be eligible for a reward if their information leads to an arrest.
Kahn is the News-Journal's Outdoors Writer. He can be reached by e-mail at jordan.kahn@news-jrnl.com.