In its letter the agency has informed the Ciulla family that founded and owns the auction — an essential shoreside service for the commercial fishing fleet and the linchpin of the Gloucester’s marine industrial economy — it was being fined $335,200 and its license suspended for 120 days for a variety of alleged violations of the fishery regulation act.
It is told that in an earlier case that the Ciullas won in an administrative trial remains unsettled. In addition to the alleged 59 counts against the auction, NMFS is also bringing under- and non-reporting charges against 24 fishing boats, primarily from Gloucester, but also Rockport, Manchester, Marblehead and Newburyport.
It is said that the case burst forth to the surprise of the Ciulla family — and permit-holding fishermen identified as the source of the allegedly illegal fish brokered by the auction — who received the letter Monday amid a growing schism between the regulators and the regulated.
Judge Edward Harrington negated core elements of its regulatory scheme while hearing a case brought by the states of Massachusetts and New Hampshire against NMFS. Auction President Larry Ciulla opined that being forced to close for 120 days would definitely be detrimental to the auction, to the fishing community and the entire community. He also said that company is innocent and his family would fight the charges, which include technical violations and alleged involvement in selling illegally caught and undersized fish brought in by the boats.
The auction is the most important brokerage operation along the coast of New England, with prestigious buyers, including Legal Seafoods and Capt. Marden’s and less well known but bigger institutional buyers meeting daily at the computer terminals in the auction to bid on the harvests of local and out-of-state boats.
