A five-month-long investigation on a commercial lobster poaching suspect concluded with a conviction in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) announced. The conviction is on top of prior commercial lobster poaching convictions and occurred while the suspect was on probation for the prior convictions.
After a series of complaints from legitimate commercial lobster harvesters operating offshore of San Pedro and Palos Verdes, Los Angeles County, CDFW launched an investigation of illegal commercial poaching activity. Using a combination of multiple contacts and inspections at sea and at the dock, home visits, analysis of marine navigation equipment seized during the investigation and various surveillance techniques, wildlife officers concluded that Rustin Craig Wilson, 37, of Lawndale, had been engaged in several commercial fishing behaviors that resulted in potential violations of commercial fishing laws and regulations. Wilson is known to wildlife officers for prior commercial lobster fishing convictions and was in the middle of a 36-month probation for those convictions by a February 13, 2020, court order.
Strict regulation provides for a remarkably successful California spiny lobster fishery for both recreational and commercial harvesters. The stringent rules are designed to allow for a limited amount of take of lobster both recreationally and by commercial harvesters while ensuring the long-term sustainability of the lobster fishery, such as:
All harvested lobsters have a size limit to ensure they have one or more opportunities to reproduce before growing to legal size for harvest;
Any harvest must be during an established lobster fishing season, which is outside of the lobster reproductive season;
Commercial lobster harvesters must employ trap “destruct devices” to automatically open the trap if it is lost to the sea and cannot be recovered because traps without destruct devices can keep fishing and ultimately keep killing lobsters; and
Traps
