Sambro, NS, fisherman, fish buyer, broke law in unsupervised halibut offloads, judges rules

A Sambro, Nova Scotia fisherman, fish buyer and two related businesses have been convicted of Fisheries Act violations, including two unsupervised offloads of halibut in the middle of the night.

The charges relate to seven voyages made by the fishing vessel Ivy Lew between May 2019 and June 2020.

In a decision released Thursday, Provincial Court Judge Elizabeth Buckle found Capt. Casey Henneberry guilty of five counts of breaching license conditions.

Buyer Samir Zakhour was found guilty of making a false statement to a fisheries officer.

ALS Fisheries was convicted on two counts and Law Fisheries on three counts.

Henneberry, Zakhour and Law Fisheries were each found not guilty on a single count.

The two midnight landings

The Ivy Lew was found to have unloaded halibut twice without a dockside monitor present in the middle of the night.

At trial, on May 20, 2020, the judge was not convinced that a fishery officer monitoring from hundreds of meters away correctly identified Henneberry as being present.

The second unloading took place at Sambro at 2 a.m. on June 12, 2020 – ten hours after Henneberry arrived and unloaded the catch in the presence of a dockside controller.

COVID protocols in place at the time meant monitors did not board the ship.

In the morning fog, the Ivy Lew stopped at another wharf in Sambro where dozens of halibut were unloaded without a monitor present.

When fishery officers rushed to do the bust, one person jumped out of the boat and fled. A pursuing officer lost this person in the dark.

Henneberry was not among those arrested at the scene, but his wallet containing $1,090 in cash and his driver’s license were found in Ivy Lew’s wheelhouse. His personal effects were also on board.

Fishery officers seized 7,461 pounds of halibut, gutted and headless.

Buyer Samir Zakhour was found behind a rope pot at the scene.

The judge didn’t buy the defense story

The judge did not find a plausible explanation for the second unloading.

She noted that the Ivy Lew was unlikely to have caught the seized halibut – which had an undressed weight of 10,000 pounds – within ten hours. It scored « a larger catch than reported on any other day for any of the seven trips ».

“While I accept that there may be legitimate reasons to move fish from one wharf to another, I do not accept that there are reasons to do so in the middle of the night,” said Buckle said in the ruling.

She also wasn’t convinced that there was no evidence of Casey Henneberry’s presence.

« I am satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the only reasonable inference is that the halibut which was removed during the unsupervised offloading was retained in the hold of the Ivy Lew after the supervised offloading, that Casey Henneberry was responsible for it, then was also … present at the unattended unloading but ran before being apprehended, » Buckle wrote.

The buyer said he was there to say hello

Zakhour was in Bedford when he received a text at 1:34 a.m. and was called to the dock. He showed up in his GMC Sierra. The truck would later be searched where a satchel containing $34,960 in cash was found inside the vehicle.

He told fishery officers that he was just there to say hello, that he had been walking and had no idea who the vehicle belonged to.

« Obviously he didn’t walk to the dock, » Buckle said, dismissing her claims.

Catch declared incorrectly

Henneberry was found to have inaccurately estimated catches when reporting to monitors. In some cases he underestimated catches and in others he overestimated them.

Regardless, Buckle found the reports to be inaccurate and in violation of license terms.

The guilty verdicts were handed down orally last month.

The decision makes no reference to sentencing.