A Waldoboro man who nine years ago was convicted of tax evasion and underreporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in eel fishing income has been charged again with violating Maine’s elver fishing laws.
Paul J. Griffin Jr., 52, has been charged with selling juvenile eels, also known as elvers or glass eels, for cash, which is a violation of laws implemented in 2013.
Despite the recent charges against Griffin and a handful of others, Maine has had a relatively low number of similar violations for the past decade. It’s been a different story across the border in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, where an alleged spree of elver poaching prompted Canada to shutdown the fishery this spring. The country has made more than 120 elver-related arrests this year, according to its Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
Maine enacted tough restrictions about 10 years ago to combat poaching for elvers, which in recent years typically have sold for around $2,000 per pound before being shipped to Asia, where they are cultivated in aquaculture ponds and then harvested as adults for the global seafood market. Maine is the only state in the U.S. with a significant juvenile eel fishery.
The state enforces catch limits by requiring the volume and price of every sale by fishermen to dealers to be electronically documented. It also prohibits the sale of elvers for cash so that every transaction has a paper trail, helping to reduce both poaching and tax evasion.
Maine’s annual fishing season for elvers, as they migrate upstream from oceans to freshwater during spring, typically generates roughly $20 million in legal income.
The Maine Department of Marine Resource has been in close contact with its regulatory counterparts in Canada, where five Mainers who have not been publicly identified were arrested last month on poaching charges, according to agency spokesperson Jeff Nichols.
Because of the poaching across the border, Canadian lawmakers invited DMR Commissioner Patrick Keliher to address them about Maine’s elver fishing policies and enforcement, Nichols said.
“We hope that Canada can implement laws and regulations similar to ours quickly,” Nichols said. “As [Keliher] said to Parliament, a heavily regulated and enforced fishery on both sides of the border will benefit both the countries and the resource.”
Griffin is one of three fishermen, all from Waldoboro, to be charged with violations since Maine’s elver season started in late March, according to Nichols.
Griffin, 36-year-old Joseph Blackler and 34-year-old Lester Feltis Jr. each have been charged with one count of failure to use the elver electronic transaction system and one count of unlawful sale of elvers for cash, Nichols said.
Two Maine dealers also have gotten in trouble this spring. Ji Xin Aquatics of Waldoboro has been charged with “numerous violations” related to buying elvers without using the transaction system, while Gray Areas R Us of Bristol has been charged with failure to report sales transactions, Nichols said.
He declined further comment, saying that all the cases are pending in court.
In 2015, Griffin pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and failure to file and pay income taxes for several recent years, state officials said at the time. He also substantially underreported his elver harvests in 2012 and 2013, during which he earned more than $370,000.
Griffin was sentenced nine years ago to 364 days in jail with all but 90 days suspended. He also was ordered to pay restitution of $67,762 and to forfeit his eligibility to harvest elvers in 2016, state officials said.
