George Scocca:
I am on the line with Lieutenant Sean Reilly. He is the Lieutenant from the Marine Enforcement Division. I'd like to welcome you to the show, Lieutenant, and thank you very much for doing this podcast with us. Our listeners, I'm sure, are very interested in knowing what the Marine Enforcement Division, what they do, how much they cover, what areas. So we have a couple of questions for you. The first thing I wanted to ask is how many Marine offices are there, and what type of geographic area are they covering? Obviously it's in the Marine district, but I was curious if striped bass also, if they were covering up there also, and everything that they do. So if you can give us an idea, that would be great.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Sure. I'm glad to be with you today. So I'm region one, which is Nassau and Suffolk Counties. We have four Marine enforcement officers and me as a supervisor in New York City, which has five boroughs in there. We have four Marine enforcement officers and the supervisor that just their job is to do the fishing and boating type enforcement. And then in addition to that, there's the sector officers, 15 officers in the city, and 24 officers on Long Island, but 20 officers on Long Island that they do Marine work, but they also have to do all the other parts of the ECL. So they don't get out all the time to do fishing type work. They have to deal with the less, as I say, fun things, such as idling vehicles, solid waste, pesticides, wetlands protection, those kinds of things.

George Scocca:
Oh. So yeah, I never knew that they, I thought there was a separate division for that. So I guess not. So they're really covering a lot. How much shoreline is that? Do you know?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Over 230 miles of shoreline. Yeah. And then all the water, and we're also deputized federal enforcement officers. So we can go out 200 miles from shore doing enforcement. When we're doing tuna or some of looking at some of the trawlers that access some closed or protected areas. We've never been the full 200 miles off shore. Furthest I've made is about 70 miles.

George Scocca:
Yeah. That's plenty. That's pretty much offshore. There's something else that I was totally unaware of. So can you give us an idea on what you see overall, as far as recreational anglers and the way they... Do they stretch laws, do they keep short fish? Are you finding that they're mostly compliant? I'm curious as to how many things that they're actually out there finding, if they're really looking at these salt water fishing registry, if you need to have that. And I think our listeners need to know the importance of that also.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Yes. We do check the Marine registry, most of the fishermen we come across, and almost everyone is compliant with it, and that does come into possibly as future funding, how many fishermen we actually have in New York, calculating things like that. So that can be important when the federal government is looking to distribute amount of fishery or funds, but even when it comes to the fishermen, most fishermen, glad to see us out there, enjoy us coming by to check them. I'd say at least 85% of the fishermen are out there having some fun, recreationally fishing, and complying with our rules. There's some people that don't know and just needs a little education. They may be new to fishing or new to the area and don't realize that possibly like New Jersey, the fluke size where they're used to fishing is different than New York, and some people that don't care. And then there's the people that claim to be recreational fishing, who are the black market style poachers that are selling their catch and will take whatever they can try and make money off of.

George Scocca:
Right. Right. Yeah. Those everyone calls those recreational fishermen selling their fish illegally, it's kind of an oxymoron. They are actually just outlaws selling fish illegally, period. And it's good to know that you folks are on top of that. So the DEC tips line, right? That's 1-844-332-3267 for those of you that don't know it. So I get a lot of comments and questions and things on the website that, "Oh, geez, I called the tip line and nobody followed up, or I never heard back." I mean, I imagine you must get a lot of calls and the calls are probably going into one number and then they have to be pushed around in different areas. Do you guys respond well to the tips line? Or when I say respond well, is it something that's a priority?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Yeah well, we try to handle all ongoing calls immediately if we have someone available, but if we got a call at 12:30 at night, that someone fishing along the Jetty at Jones Inlet, keeping a bunch of striped bass, there may not be someone working and have the phone on to get that call, but it's definitely worth making the call when you see things happening. It's disappointing. Sometimes we get calls from people that they'll call and they'll be like, "Yeah, I was out two nights ago and I saw these people with nets doing things that didn't look right." And it's like, "Well, we preferred if you called immediately. And possibly we could have gotten someone out look into it." But all calls are worthwhile when they come into us. Information, even if we can't get there immediately, if we know that, say, there's an area where people are going at at night with nets, the officers can work that into their patrols.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Or if there's a boat, it's always in a certain area, if they have a good description, we can try and set up to watch for a boat returning to a certain marina that every afternoon seems to be loaded with black fish and doesn't seem to be a commercial fishermen. It could be they are commercial fishermen, fishing out of a small recreational style boat. Or it could be someone that is like the poacher, but we do encourage people to call with any information, or anytime they see something that just doesn't seem right to them.

George Scocca:
Okay. So I'm going to look at one particular bust. You probably won't know it, but you might, where last year in July, ECOs Colton Garren and Darren [Milleron 00:07:53] responded to a complaint. And I'm curious as to, that someone told them that they saw people hiding garbage bags full of short fluke, and they got there. They found, I don't know, a bunch of fish that were, I think 16 or 17 fish, that were undersized and hidden in a bag. So normally, like you had mentioned earlier, anglers that keep, I feel, many anglers that keep some short fish are just not educated, but in this case, it's totally obvious that they knew what they were doing, they're hiding the fish, and they were issued five tickets, right?

George Scocca:
So I was curious. Right away the reaction is, just doesn't seem to be a stiff enough fine. We don't even know how much the fine is, but it just doesn't seem to fit the crime, right? So would you folks, in that instance, do you, as an agency, have the right to take possession of their fishing equipment, or let's say they had a boat, would you be able, do you have that right to confiscate what they were using when they were catching the fish?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
For regular fishing violations, we don't have the right to take boats towards forfeitures. If there's illegal gear being used, like operating an oversized same net or something like that, that we will take as evidence towards the crime. The fishing poles and things like that, we usually don't take, because that creates a nightmare of storing them and then having to return them once a case is settled. When it comes to shellfish, for certain violations of taking illegally by mechanical means, or at night in uncertified areas, and uncertified are the areas that are polluted and not deemed safe to take the shellfish for people to be then eating. We do have the law for forfeiture there, but we have to go then, win the case in court and get the judge to then agree to the forfeiture. So there's a lot of steps. New York isn't a state like Florida that's known for seizing a lot of items, but we go with what we can and we bring it to court and try and win all our cases.

George Scocca:
Right. Right. So speaking to that, it was also, I was trying to find it for the interview, but I remember last year there were a couple of ECOs that joined, actually went out in the water at night with numerous people that were illegally crabbing, I believe, or maybe it was clamming, it was one or the other. And they issued over 50 citations and there was just a huge number of illegal shellfish there. So that brings me to the undercover stuff that you guys do, right? So in this case, obviously they dressed up like one of them, went out with them, and proceeded to issue citations while they were out there. Do you guys do that a lot? I mean, is there a lot of undercover work? You send people on party boats, on charter boats and things like that?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
In addition to the uniform officers I described, we have two or three investigators, which are like detective for us, in each of the regions. And they get involved in some bigger cases and mostly solid waste, but then a big fishing investigation, they'll help out as well. But cases like you're discussing there, we get complaints that, say, Canarsie Pier or capturing of Babylon docks. There's people every night taking way more crabs than they should, or they're using illegal means to harvest them, we'll then go down there to try and take a unmarked car with someone that's not wearing uniform, and try and blend in, or sit there and observe the activity, because some of these places, as soon as you drive into a parking lot with a marked vehicle, everything's going to either go flying back into the water, or people are just going to walk away from anything that they did have, and we're not going to be able to make the case.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
And we've had some good nights with crabs or even the shellfish in Jamaica Bay, which is a big thing, because it's not open, because it's not deemed safe for those clams to be eaten. We'll get some people that aren't permitted that may have two or three people with thousands of clams that claim that taking them for their own purposes, but we're assuming that were going to be destined for some kind of market or restaurant, which we're glad when we can intercept those kinds of things and try and keep people healthier, and stop the people from trying to profit off the illegal take of fish or shellfish.

George Scocca:
Yeah. I mean, if they were for their own consumption, a couple of thousand of them, I think they'd be glowing after they ate all of them, because some of those areas, look, I'm from the [inaudible 00:13:40]. I mean, if you put your leg in the [inaudible 00:13:42], it's probably three, or the clams straight down, but you're not going to eat them out of there, so I totally get that. All right. So another thing, so back to the undercover stuff. So do you send people into a lot of fish stores? Because we see a lot of that. It's harder now to know what's legal and what isn't, but a lot of times, you go into, not that I've been in many of them, but I seen photos of them, and you see, there's obviously a short black fish in the tanks, or in many cases, I don't know if the fish market, how many they're even allowed to have. Do you guys look into that much on or would that take a DEC tip to say, "Hey, I was in the store and I saw," or do you randomly walk in?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
We do routine patrols for retail markets and wholesalers to check for compliance that the size of the fish that they have is proper, and the season, that they are not going to have any New York striped bass when our season's closed. And we get some complaints that people are confused. They see 15 inch fluke at a place and assume that's short, but the 14 inch is the legal commercial size. So sometimes there is confusion, but we always are glad if people see something that they don't think is right, to call us, and we will investigate. And we've had complaints where we've gotten large numbers of striped bass that weren't legally harvested either at a market, because someone was in there, saw striped bass that didn't have the color tag in the mouth, and thought that was odd because they were used to seeing them that way, and called, and led to tickets being issued and fish being seized.

George Scocca:
Yeah. As recreational fishermen, we love to hear that. I know now that the black fish are going to have a similar tag system. So I guess you're going to be looking for tags there too.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Yes. And that goal of the tags is try and interrupt the black market for black fish. And so it' going to be a metal tag in the gill plate that will be serial numbered, so we can tell who should have harvested that fish. And that hopefully will be a help, because we've had people with hundreds of black fish, many under size, that were, as I said, calling themselves recreational fishermen, but we know all those fish weren't destined for their kitchen table. They had some way to get rid of them, whether it's restaurants or a dealer that's willing to buy from people that they feel the dealer can get a cheaper price buying from someone who's not a legitimate fishermen. they can hopefully increase their profit. And those are the kinds of cases that we love to make, because one, it's helping protect the commercial fishermen that are trying to follow the rules, and it often gets a nice story out there that people start telling, and it can maybe scare some other people away from trying to do the same thing.

George Scocca:
Right. Right. Totally makes sense. So I have a couple of questions here from listeners. Let me see which one I like here. Okay, so there are times when you have joint operations with Coast Guard. And can you tell us the purpose behind that? Why you guys just wouldn't be out there on your own? Why you would need the Coast Guard?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
We do joint patrols with Coast Guard with the towns and the counties for multiple reasons. One, it could be, they have a better platform, if we want to be underway for an extended period of time, that one of the larger boats might be better for that. We use them to come along with us, sometimes help them because their small moat boat might be down at a station, or they're limited on how many crew they have, and they may be looking for a way to get out there to get their safety boardings done. The Coast Guard also is a good resource for us to spread our patrols around. So if we wanted to go on a boat patrol where we takes three ECOs, then if we have doing joint patrols with the Coast Guard and work out and say, John's Beach, Fire Island, and Shinnecock, who get one ECO on each Coast Guard boat, and cover a much larger area for things like when the tuna run is going and we're looking for people coming back, being compliant with the bluefin size and possession limits.

George Scocca:
Right. That must be a tough undertaking with the blue fin, especially. So, okay. Another question. When an ECO asks to come aboard, does the boat operator have to let him?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
The section that gives us outright boarding authority is actually for inspection for a head. So that's for state enforcement. If you're doing anything that would be federal, nexus of fisheries. If you're doing tuna or you're fishing for sea bass or fluke outside the three mile area, and we're under a federal enforcement, then you do have to let us inspect. But if we see you fishing, we have the right to ask questions. And let's say you display your Marine registry for us, a boat registration, or required safety equipment. And if any time during while we're asking these questions, we observe a violation, or the suspicion arises that something's not right that we need to investigate, then we can then get to the point where you'll hear the stop and frisk level, when it comes to NYPD, we have the right to then investigate further.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
And sometimes that comes from asking a question like, "Do you have any fish on board?" And someone says, my favorite answer is, "Not really." I've had that multiple times. Someone says, "Not really." And then you know there's something they don't want us to see, because otherwise the answer would have been no or not yet, but not really is not an answer that makes sense to that question.

George Scocca:
Absolutely. Sounds like a guilty party to me. Not really. Either you have a fish or you don't have a fish. Now, is it the right size?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
"I don't have any fish," and you look at the cooler and there's four or five tails sticking out of it. Maybe it's just bunker they have for bait, but obviously there's some kind of fish on the boat.

George Scocca:
Yeah, yeah, totally have to agree with that. So then at that point you would say, "Okay, well coming aboard, I want to see what you have in there."

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Yes. Once we have a reasonable belief that there may be a violation present, we have the right to proceed with inspecting you for your catch and any required documents you should have on you.

George Scocca:
Okay. So a question about party boats, and I guess, charter boats. So the law reads that the angler is responsible for the fish that they're keeping, right? So if I catch a fish and it's a half inch short and I keep that fish, I kept it short. Now, on every party boat that I've ever been on, and on every charter boat I've ever been on, I have never been told by anyone, say half-inch, or hang on to it. They always tell you to throw them back. But what happens in a case, and I'm not saying that it has ever happened, because I don't know if it has, where someone on the boat, a mate or someone says, "Oh, don't worry about it. It's only an eighth inch short," and the guy keeps it, and then you get on the boat, and he gets bagged. So is that still his responsibility?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
The boat would be responsible once it definitely gets to the point where if they're filleting the fish, or some boats, especially when it's warm out, might hold the fish in a larger ice box in the back and give you a number tag so you can claim your fish at the end of the day. Then the boat has accepted responsibility, and we will look at the mate or the operator of that boat as being the responsible person. And we do get complaints from people that say, "I went on this boat on Friday and they told us, 'Keep whatever you want. We don't care what the DEC says.'" Then we may look to try and do the undercover fishing with us or with the assistance of NOA if it is a federal boat, to try and document how they are operating.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Sometimes that leads to finding a boat that's filleting way too many short fish, or sometimes we'll go on boats and we'll leave, the people that are fishing will leave the boat and go, "There was nothing wrong on that boat the entire day. And every short fish went back. The mates yelled at people that tried to put stuff into their own coolers," because on some boats, the mate don't see a lot of the fish, especially when you're bottom fishing, porgies and sea bass, where you come up really fast, people are just stuffing it into their own coolers. And then the fishermen is responsible for his catch.

George Scocca:
So if the fishermen puts the fish in the coolers and the mates or captain do not filet the fish, so then the mates or the boat is not responsible, but as soon as a mate filets a short, they are then responsible. Correct? I never knew that.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Yeah. Once they do anything that they've then taken responsibility or possession of that fish, right. Then they've become part of the violation. And then they are liable for being possession of the undersized or over limit sea bass or stripe bass or whatever we might have on a vessel that often gets filleted when they're caught outside the legal size.

George Scocca:
Right. Right. So now the fluke, recreational anglers, we can't filet fluke without keeping the racks. It's the same way on a party boat, correct?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Right. Yeah. Recreational fishermen can't filet fluke or striped bass on the boat. Permit holders can filet, and they have to keep the racks. And they have to have the racks available until after everyone's left the boat, and then get rid of them before they start fishing on the next trip. So that is sometimes a problem when you board a boat and there's about 12 fish worth of filets, and there's only three racks to be seen on the boat. Then we think that something wrong was happening and possibly filleting undersized fish.

George Scocca:
Right. Okay. So I'm going to go back at this one more time, take another bite at it. So when I filet a fluke, right? So I filet it up nice. Let's say it's a legal fish, it always is a legal face with me and the people I fish with. And most people that I know, but when I filet it, I take off that side rib, the two side ribs, right? Those are perfect fluke bait. So the way I read it and the way I see it, I'm not allowed to use that though. Is that correct? Because I kind of want to clear that up with people that you're not supposed to, you can't filet a fish the day before and then bring out strips to use for bait. Is that correct?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Well, the way the regulations read, you can't filet the brown side of a fluke while you're underway. You can the white side off, if you want to use that for bait, but it doesn't actually prohibit from bringing older pieces back. And then it becomes a judgment issue if the officer believes you, that you possess mutilated fluke from that day or from another day, and often it's obvious when the guy pulls out the Ziploc bag and you can tell that it's strips that have been frozen, that this is not something they caught today. But it does get into an area where it could be off the discretion of possessing mutilated fluke, that we don't have a body to measure for, to know it was a legal five fish.

George Scocca:
Yeah. See, now that's interesting. I'm sure there's a lot of listeners out there that are saying, "Wow, I could keep those strips and use them." That's very interesting because I know most people won't bring them out. They'll do like you said, and they'll filet a chunk off the back and use that. But in the meantime, we're throwing out all this great bait. So that's really, really good to know.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Just, if you use them after striped bass bait, just know everyone's aware that the circle hook regulations are coming, so if you're using a natural bait for striped bass, that it's going to require a circle hook.

George Scocca:
Right. Right. I was actually going to ask if there was any, I know it's coming down any day now. And from what I understand, that is the description, it kind of changed from the original text, which I think was basically copied from the freshwater one side. So, but from what I'm reading, if you could still find pork rind, or if you add pork rind, technically you could still use that on... The big deal, I'm sure a lot of people were questioning, I use a jig, I tip it off with something, the fish, it can't get gutted, it's a diamond jig. So that was a stickler. That, and the tubing worm, which we know you've already approved. Right? If I'm correct? You can still use a J hook on a tubing worm when you're trolling?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Right, yeah. Originally coming out of the Atlantic State Commission, it was going to be anything that natural bait was going to have to require a circle hook. And the technical committee took feedback from fishermen and went back and revised it. So if it's a lure, like you're tipping off, say, a umbrella rig or a buck tail with something, that then that is exempt from the circle hook requirement. And Connecticut, I think, already passed that circle hook. New York, it should be hopefully getting put into effect real soon, but the Atlantic States or Mid Atlantic Commissions, when they come up with regulations, we then have to match them, or we can be more strict. And we're trying to, on this, to take their language, which it'll not be pork rinds or using anything that's not a Marine bait won't be included.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
So the circle hook is going to be for using worms, bait fish like bunker chum, or using chilies, or spearing, or using squid. But if you're using pork rinds or something that's not a Marine bait, then that'll be exempt from it. But all lures will, as of the way it's going to be this year, will be exempt from circle hooks.

George Scocca:
Oh, very interesting. Okay. So yeah, now that we're on to the big one, the striped bass. So with the slot fish, I never liked that idea to slot, but that's my personal opinion. So with the slot fish now, once you catch a slot and you put it in the boat, are you still able to continue fishing for stripe bass?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
The way our regs are, I don't see a way that you can't continue to fish, but anything that you then hook must be released immediately without any unnecessary harm. So that would be no using a gaff, no holding it out of the water for extended period of time to get 30 pictures with it before you release it. So you're allowed the one fish to keep, and then any fish after that per person would have to be released immediately without harm.

George Scocca:
Right. So again, I just realized, so what you're saying, getting back to the circle hook thing. So if I'm fluke fishing and I have regular bait on my buck tail and I catch a slot size striped bass. So I'm allowed to keep that fish? Or does that fish have to be returned because it had bait on the buck tail?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
If you said you were using a buck tail, therefore a buck tail is a lure, so then that would not require the circle hook. But if you're using a weight with a sliding bait with a J hook for blue fish, and you catch the stripe bass, then you would have to release that. Or if you're using just a regular naked Mustad hook with some spearing on it with squid, and you catch the striped bass with that, then you would have to release it.

George Scocca:
Yeah, boy, we really have to trust the angler a lot in that [inaudible 00:33:06], that's for sure. Well, actually, most of these are, I'm not going to say volunteer, but look, you don't have the greatest, the largest staff you can, you can never afford to patrol every end. So there's always going to be people that, in that case, they're going to say, "Well, geez, well I caught the fish anyway." And I'm not agreeing with it, but I'm sure that's going to be the thought pattern. So, all right. So is there anything else that you could tell us about the charge of the ECOs and what else they do? Things that maybe my listeners aren't aware of?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Well, something that's been big the past year is helping out with a lot of the COVID sites, has taken a lot of ECOs into help with the other agencies that normally do that work to run some of the testing and some of the vaccination sites. But most of all, work is the hunting and fishing enforcement, the old game protector job. But as I said before, diesel emissions are a big thing in the Metro areas, solid waste enforcement, like people saw, we had lots of dirty fill coming out from New York City that was being dumped all around Long Island. Some people were getting onto that property thinking that it was clean sand or dirt that they're going to, say, fill in their pool with. And it turns out that it was laden with contamination because it was an industrial air in Brooklyn that it came from. A lot of our time is spent doing Homeland Security style work of radiation detection, we're one of the lead agencies to doing that. We do that on the water and on land.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
We'll participate in drills and details where it will set up to try and do mock intercepts of, say, someone was trying to bring in a illicit radiation source towards New York City to make a dirty bomb, if we have intel, we could possibly intercept it before it gets there. And pesticides, this time of year is a big thing, making sure that the landscapers that applying it are properly licensed and following the rules, so we don't have issues where people's dogs or children possibly get sick from that. And then another big thing for Long Island is the wetlands protection, freshwater and saltwater, that if people are doing work in their backyards that's not bulkheaded, that they're not going to do something that's got to then go have harm to the natural grasses that are there, that help the birds and the fish have breeding areas, or possibly destroy sensitive wetlands that there's species that are needed to be protected for their benefit to the environment.

George Scocca:
Oh, that's great. Hey, I have one more question for you. Were you guys involved in that guy that was selling the sharks that he was keeping up in, I don't know, it was in Duchess County and he was selling those sandbar sharks?

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Yes. A Georgia officer actually called me because they had this guy that they stopped. He got stopped by a cop for a regular violation, and they're like, "What do you have back there?" And he's like, "Oh, sharks." So that seems weird. So they called us, the Fish and Wildlife officer in Georgia, and he called me because the guy's from New York, and that led to, where in New York is he from? And unfortunately, it was up in Duchess County, so I didn't get to be directly involved. But yes, we did end up. The DC was involved with this person who was catching his own sharks down south, bringing them up here, putting them in tanks, and then possibly selling them to aquariums or other people that wanted to have a unique thing of having their own shark swimming around. He has a tank in the garage or the basement. That was different.

George Scocca:
I saw a photo of, he had a big, round pool, and he had six sharks in there swimming. And I'm like, "What are people going to, they're going to buy a shark. Don't they realize it's going grow?" I mean, they weren't that large, but well, anyway, if you can catch him, you folks can catch anybody. And to think that that originated down in Georgia is...

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Just on a traffic stop.

George Scocca:
That is quite impressive. I mean, I actually saw a picture where you could see the shark in the window of the side of the truck. And somebody must've been like, "What the heck?" So, yeah, that was very interesting. To me, the sad part is, and again, you have nothing to do with this, is they fine the guy five grand and it's got to be just part of doing business, because I think he had a record on this, that he had done it once before or something. And so he's probably just going to go back and do the same thing. Hopefully you'll catch him again. That's all I got to say. So listen, Lieutenant Reilly, I really appreciate this interview. I believe we have brought some light on what you folks do, and that you have quite a team there, and that you're definitely understaffed and we need double or triple the officers there one day, and someday it'll happen.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
Yeah. But we have a good number of good offices on Long Island, New York City, that are out there doing that job and trying to catch as many bad guys as they can.

George Scocca:
That's great. Well, keep up the good work and don't let this stripe bass thing get everybody too crazy, because it's going to be very confusing. So, but again, thank you for the interview, I really appreciate it, I hope to talk to you in the future. And if there's anything that we can ever do to help you get a word out, please let me know.

Lt. Sean Reilly:
All right. Thanks for your time.

George Scocca:
All right, thank you.