State fines abalone poacher $40K
Kevin L. Hiersche, 51, pleaded guilty this month to five charges of taking abalone out of season, falsifying business records and lacking a wholesalers license.
The Gold Beach man had qualified to take a limited amount of flat abalone in 2001, said Sgt. David Anderson of the Oregon State Police.
In exchange for taking 3,000 pounds of abalone a year, he’d provide population surveys to the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife. His catches were closely regulated. His sale had to go to one wholesaler. He could then buy them back and re-sell them, but only to restaurants and consumers.
The species has small populations living on reefs off the South Coast, including near Port Orford, Gold Beach and on Simpson Reef, said Scott Groth, a shellfish biologist with ODFW in Charleston. Biologists hadn’t supported the idea of issuing Hiersche a license, but the ODFW commissioners issued it anyway.
It’s hard to know how many abalone are out there, but other species have been hard hit from commercial harvesting, Groth said.
“We knew that a flat abalone fishery wasn’t a good idea,” he said.
OSP started hearing complaints that Hiersche was selling his bought-back abalone to other wholesalers and underreporting how much he landed. When police went into Hiersche’s home, they found 30 pounds of vacuum sealed abalone that they determined he’d taken in 2009. The problem was that the state hadn’t renewed his permit and the commission now has canceled commercial abalone harvesting altogether.
“Mr. Hiersche was entrusted with a tremendous privilege, but greed and temptation led him to violate that trust in the worst possible way,” Anderson said.
A Curry County grand jury indicted Hiersche in August 2009 on 44 misdemeanor and felony counts. It also indicted Daniel W. Wright, 40, on five charges. He had served as a tender, while Hiersche dove for abalone from his boat, the Jerry Lee, an OSP press release said.
A judge sentenced Hiersche to 40 days in jail, followed by three years of probation. He’ll have to pay nearly $40,000 in fines and restitution. Wright went to jail for 10 days, has a year and a half of probation and must pay $8,300 in fees, fines and restitution. He pleaded guilty to one charge of poaching abalone.
