Archive for August, 2010

3 Lower Florida Keys Lobster Mobsters Arrested

BY ADAM LINHARDT Citizen Staff
alinhardt@keysnews.com

Three Lower Keys men accused of poaching more than 100 undersized lobsters and out-of-season stone crab off Little Torch Key, including a commercial fisherman and his son, were charged by state wildlife officials Thursday.

Benjamin Joseph White, 41, and his son, Christopher Joseph White, 18, both of Little Torch Key, and Edward Arthur Brusseau, 45, of Big Pine Key, were arrested on misdemeanor charges of possessing undersized wrung lobster tails and stone crab claws out of season.

Benjamin White was also charged with a misdemeanor for having expired boat tags and Brusseau faces additional misdemeanor charges of possession of under 20 grams of marijuana and pot paraphernalia.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) officers allege the elder White and Brusseau possessed 89 undersized wrung lobster tails and six stone crab claws. Christopher White allegedly possessed 13 undersized wrung tails and one stone crab claw, agency spokesman Bobby Dube said.

Florida stone crab season does not begin until Oct. 15.

The officers were in the “right place at the right time” at 5 a.m. Thursday when the trio was tying up in the mangroves, far from any marina or boat ramp, Dube said.

All three had been fishing with a bully net, a legal method employed at night when lobsters are walking along the flats. A flashlight helps spot the crayfish and a net attached to a long pole is placed on top of them, Dube said.

“Their eyes shine a like a deer in the shallow water and you can just scoop them up that way,” Dube said.

• In an unrelated case, the state also charged a 37-year-old Coral Springs woman with transporting lobsters from Marathon to a Pompano Beach fish house without a state license, trip tickets or bill of sale — all misdemeanors.

Illegal Fish Traps Found Near Looe Key

BY TIMOTHY O’HARA Citizen Staff
tohara@keysnews.com

Authorities are looking for an unscrupulous fisherman, or group of them, who placed illegal fish traps off Looe Key, one of the Florida Keys’ most protected and pristine coral reef patches.

The first trap was found July 30 anchored to a coral head to keep it from moving from its position, and the second was found last week, both on the reef line outside of the Looe Key Special Protection Area off Big Pine Key, which is a no-fishing zone, Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary spokeswoman Karrie Carnes said.

The traps, wire cages with no biodegradable components, would kill fish if they went unchecked.

“There is no way they would open up on their own,” Carnes said.

The trap, designed with apparently new construction materials, led officials to believe the gear had been put in the water relatively recently “to intentionally poach from Keys waters,” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Special Agent Kenneth Blackburn said. “To date we’ve found two subsurface traps, but there could be hundreds more indiscriminately harvesting from the sanctuary.”

Fish traps for large species such as snapper and grouper are illegal in Florida state and federal waters, though they can be used to catch small baitfish.

The Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council banned new traps in 1987 and phased out existing ones over a 10-year period. The South Atlantic Fishery Council followed suit in 1988, banning traps in the ocean’s federal waters 3 miles off the coast between North Carolina and Florida. One exception is small traps for black sea bass, mainly off the Carolinas. The Florida Legislature banned traps in state waters even earlier, in 1980, but allows traps for small bait and shellfish.

Fish traps have been a touchy issue in the Keys and across the state. Fishermen and environmentalists have long and vehemently opposed them, saying they indiscriminately catch too many other fish that die as they are brought to the surface, including angelfish, surgeonfish and other fish important to keeping reefs healthy.

North Florida’s long-line fishermen earlier this year asked that fish traps be allowed again, but the fishery management councils rejected the idea.

Key Largo Lobster Mobsters Sentenced to Jail Time

By DAVID GOODHUE
dgoodhue@keysreporter.com

Michael Cavagnaro, the former Key Largo elected official convicted of molesting lobster traps in June, was denied a new trial Friday and sentenced to nine months in county jail.

His son, 33-year-old Michael Cavagnaro Jr., was sentenced to four months in jail.

Monroe County Circuit Court Judge Luis Garcia also sentenced both men to four years probation and eight hours a month of community service, ordered their commercial fishing licenses revoked and banned them from the water on both the oceanside and bayside of Monroe County.

Bill Heffernan, the attorney who represented both men during their trial and only the younger Cavagnaro at Friday’s sentencing hearing, said he and Joel Hirschhorn, the elder Cavagnaro’s attorney, have filed an appeal with the state’s Third Court of Appeal.

“I truly believe they are innocent. This is a sad case,” Heffernan said in an interview.

Garcia set bail at $50,000 each. It was not clear at press time if the father and son posted bail and were released.

The Cavagnaros, both commercial lobster fishermen, were charged with tampering with another commercial angler’s trap on Aug. 25, 2009. At the time, Cavagnaro was an elected member of the Key Largo Fire and Emergency Medical Services District. Gov. Charlie Crist removed him from office following his arrest.

A jury convicted the men on June 23.

Heffernan argued during Friday’s hearing at the Plantation Key Courthouse that “the weight of the evidence is insufficient to support the verdict in this case.” He also said several of the tactics used by the prosecution unfairly prejudiced the jury.

First, Heffernan argued that prosecutors violated Garcia’s instructions not to mention anything that happened 14 days beyond Aug. 25, 2009.

During the trial, prosecutor Colleen Dunne questioned Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers and several fishermen. They testified that no traps belonging to the Cavagnaros were found in the area where witnesses said the Cavagnaros had pulled another fisherman’s trap.

The FWC officers checked the area more than 14 days after the Cavagnaros were arrested. Heffernan argued that mentioning that in the trial violated Garcia’s instructions. Dunne countered that since the elder Cavagnaro claimed he and his son were in the area checking on their traps that day, it was the FWC’s responsibility to verify if any were there. None were ever found, she said.

Heffernan also argued for a new trial based on a witness he said Dunne called to the stand specifically to humiliate. Dunne said she called the witness, Michael Cavagnaro’s girlfriend, because the defense had said she would testify but then removed her name. Her testimony did not match earlier statements she made, which Dunne pointed out while she was on the stand.

The Cavagnaros hadn’t planned to testify during the four-day trial, Heffernan said, but were forced to after Cavagnaro’s girlfriend’s testimony differed from her deposition on key areas of the case.

Hirschhorn also tried to get results of a polygraph test he arranged for the Cavagnaros submitted as evidence for a new trial. Both men scored high on the questions they were asked, Hirschhorn said. “They were two of the highest scores I have ever seen,” he said.

Garcia denied the request, saying polygraph results are not reliable, and these results were particularly questionable because the defense hired the technician and no one from law enforcement was present. “The stress levels are a lot different when the results do not have to be considered,” Garcia said.

Heffernan and Hirschhorn offered several other arguments in their motion for a new trial, all of which Garcia denied.

Trap molesting is a third-degree felony, and third-degree felonies can in some cases be punishable by up to five years in prison. But a law passed by the state Legislature went into effect last summer that makes it almost impossible for a judge to sentence prison time for a non-violent third-degree felony. Prosecutors must prove the person would be a threat to society if he or she were not incarcerated, Garcia said.

Nevertheless, Dunne wanted the Cavagnaros sentenced to two years in prison, arguing to Garcia that they were a threat to the Keys’ commercial fishing industry.

“[The law] doesn’t mean they have to be a violent threat… . “They molested traps from brother fishermen who were already suffering from the down economy,” Dunne said

Garcia disagreed, taking into account the scores of letters from neighbors, former colleagues and family members praising the men’s characters and past good deeds, as well as the elder Cavagnaro’s service as a member of the Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Department. He worked for Palm Beach County from the 1980s to 2001, when he left on disability because of work-related injuries.

Garcia said he also took into account the elder Cavagnaro’s time volunteering at Ground Zero in Manhattan days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

One elderly man told Garcia that the Cavagnaros went out of their way to help their neighbors on several occasions.

“”My wife has taken ill several times recently, and Mike was at the door every single time,” neighbor Donald Balletti said. “It’s totally inconceivable that he would be involved in something like this.”