Father and son plead guilty in rockfish probe

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Joseph Peter Nelson Jr., a commercial fisherman from Great Mills, pleaded guilty to four felony violations of the Lacey Act for participating in a scheme from 2003 through 2006 to illegally overharvest and under report the amount of rockfish he took from the Potomac River, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

His father, Joseph Peter Nelson Sr. of Avenue, also pleaded guilty to one felony violation of the Lacey Act, the prosecutors report, for assisting in transporting the illegally taken rockfish in interstate commerce.

The prosecutors' office reports that Joseph Peter Nelson Jr. had help from his father and Robert Lumpkins' Golden Eye Seafood business, a Maryland designated check-in station, to inflate the number of fish recorded and under report the weight.

"By inflating the number of fish caught and under reporting the weight, the records made it appear that Nelson … had not reached the poundage quota for the year," the prosecutors' office reports. "He then requested more tags from the state of Maryland in order to catch more fish above his quota, which were never reported by Golden Eye Seafood and were transported to other states for sale."

In addition, prosecutors report, "Nelson admitted to catching rockfish that were below the legal size limit in Maryland, and using tags that falsely indicated the method of catch. The tags indicated that he had caught the fish using hook and line when in fact they were caught using a net. Nelson admitted that he used a knife to simulate hook marks on the fish in order to avoid detection."

On eight different occasions, prosecutors report, Nelson, with his father's assistance, sold a total of more than 2,500 pounds of illegally harvested and tagged fish to an undercover agent posing as an out-of-state fish buyer. The total amount of rockfish overharvested by Nelson was approximately 14,500 pounds, in addition to the rockfish that was falsely tagged, and the total market value of his overharvest of rockfish was in excess of $72,000.

Lumpkins earlier pleaded guilty to falsely recording the amount and weight of rockfish that were harvested by local fisherman and checked-in at his business, prosecutors report, and he faces sentencing in September. Fourteen people and two corporations have been convicted of illegally harvesting, purchasing and selling rockfish in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., as a result of the investigation.

jwharton@somdnews.com