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Raid nets suspected seafood poachers
By John Simerman
SAN FRANCISCO - A raid targeting the Northern California black market for abalone and sturgeon netted 17 arrests Thursday morning in one of the largest poaching busts ever in the state.
Officers with the state Department of Fish and Game made simultaneous 7 a.m. arrests in the East Bay, San Francisco, the Sacramento area and the North Bay. They also arrested an abalone poaching suspect in Oregon.
The raids combined three separate cases. Two targeted poachers and buyers of abalone, a once abundant sea delicacy that faced extinction before the state banned commercial harvests in 1995. It has gradually tightened limits on sport diving, most recently in 2003.
The third, which netted 10 arrests, aimed at what authorities described as a ring selling sturgeon meat and roe -- prized and pricey caviar -- in the Oakland and Sacramento areas.
In San Francisco, fish and game wardens climbed a metal fence in the Visitacion Valley neighborhood to arrest Bao Zhang, a 53-year-old restaurant owner, at his home. Zhang later walked outside with a jacket over his head as reporters and photographers, invited by the state agency, hovered.
He was booked at San Francisco's County Jail on suspicion of three misdemeanor counts that each carry a maximum $1,000 fine, officials said.
Wardens then searched Bob's Sushi, a restaurant Zhang owns in San Francisco. There, they seized less than a pound of abalone, and other illegal seafood, officials said.
Three times, undercover state agents sold abalone to Zhang, as much as 60 of the exotic mollusks at a time, said Capt. Dave Fox of the Department of Fish and Game. Zhang told the agents that he planned to ship some of them to Hong Kong, Fox said.
State law prohibits the purchase or sale of abalone, which can fetch $60 to $100 each. Sport divers can harvest up to three abalone per day, with a maximum of 24 per year, but only in certain months and north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
It is legal to buy pink abalone from Mexico, but they are "not nearly as delectable" as the red abalone found off the California coast, said Fox. It is also legal to buy from red-abalone farms, but those abalone tend to be smaller and much pricier than buying from poachers.
Thursday's sting involved 29 teams of wardens. The operation targeted 20 people for arrest and included about a third of the agency's 288 officers.
"That's how important our duty is to enforce the wildlife laws guarding against poaching," said Troy Swauger, an agency spokesman. "To some of these people, a license doesn't mean anything."
There have been larger raids; one in 2003 netted 23 people for catching, selling or possessing sturgeon. But Thursday's, combining three separate probes that dated back as far as 2000, may have been the most complex, a fish and game spokesman said.
State officials are concerned with both sea animals because of their depleted numbers and the time they take to grow. Sturgeon grow 10 to 14 years before they can reproduce. Abalone can take nine to 10 years to reach maturity, said Carrie Wilson, a state biologist.
"(Abalone) populations are stable right now, but that's due to strong management practices," said Wilson.
Among others arrested was Concord resident Bing Wei, 36, who also bought abalone from undercover agents, officials said. Wei works at China House, another Embarcadero-area restaurant. Officers found 21 shelled abalone at the restaurant owner's house, said a fish and game spokesman.
Also arrested were three North Bay abalone poaching suspects. All three face felony charges that carry a maximum three-year prison sentence, according to Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office.
The price of caviar from white sturgeon, a bony fish found in the Delta that can grow to 500 pounds or more, has risen with sharp declines in beluga caviar stocks in the Black and Caspian seas near Russia. On the black market, Delta caviar can sell for $165 per pound. State law allows sport anglers to catch one of the fish per day but bans selling them or their eggs.
Alexandr Krasnodemsky, 27, who authorities described as the leader of a sturgeon ring, and his brother, Oleg Krasnodemsky, 27, both from the Sacramento area, were among 10 suspects arrested in "Operation Delta Beluga III." Six others were from Oakland. Authorities said the ring included a group of fishers who sold sturgeon taken from the Sacramento River.
Though they touted success Thursday, fish and game officials cautioned that the problem appears to be growing, and most poachers see it as a risk worth taking.
"We don't think the penalties are stiff enough to deter them," said Fox.
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