The BBC reported last month that sharp-eyed members of a Welsh angling club spotted someone trying to poach a salmon using illegal equipment (a barbed treble hook on spinning bait, if you’re curious), and called in the authorities. Officers of Natural Resources Wales located a man who appeared to fit the description of the rogue angler, partly because of his height and clothing but also because he had a great big salmon hanging out of his sleeve.
As I’m sure you know, Section 32 of the Salmon Act 1986, entitled “Handling fish in suspicious circumstances,” makes one guilty of an offense—
if, at a time when he believes or it would be reasonable for him to suspect that a relevant offence has at any time been committed in relation to any fish to which this section applies, he receives that fish or undertakes in its retention, removal or disposal, or if he arranges to do so.
The relevant fish include salmon, trout, eels, and lampreys, among others, and that was clearly a salmon peeking out of the aforementioned sleeve. As for the relevant offenses, it is not only illegal to use a barbed treble hook on spinning bait, it is also illegal to keep any salmon caught in a Welsh river if it is more than 23 inches long, which this one definitely was. The man admitted he knew doing so was illegal and that he “deliberately tried to hide the salmon inside his jacket” in order to abscond with it. Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to three counts of breaching the catch-and-release law and one count of “handling salmon under suspicious circumstances.”
While that statute sounds like it’s aimed only at co-conspirators, I guess the charge does fit. To put it in statutory terms, the defendant certainly “believe[d] … a relevant offense had been committed in relation to” a salmon—because he was the one who committed it—and he had “undertake[n]” to retain or remove said salmon by sticking it up his sleeve. The statute would be broad enough to cover any salmon-handler who should reasonably suspect someone else committed an offense in getting it, but it does seem to cover the offender as well. It isn’t quite the same as the underlying offense itself because of the additional sneakiness element, so he’s arguably not being punished twice for the same thing.
According to the report, this provision was added—after a five-hour debate in the House of Lords—to protect “unwitting people” who might find themselves innocently handling a salmon that turned out to have been illegally procured. Here, of course, the defendant didn’t try to argue that the salmon had jumped into his coat or something like that, which is disappointing but probably the right call under the circumstances.
The defendant was ordered to pay £2,580 ($3,287), which the report says included a fine of £414, NRW costs of £2,000, and a “victim surcharge” of £166. That seemed like a lot for the family of a salmon, who I doubt had ever even met him, but it turns out that this “victim surcharge” doesn’t go directly to the victim(s) of the particular crime, or to their spawn, but rather to a general fund that is used to fund various victim and witness services.
The fate of the victim himself was not reported, but he was most likely confiscated and, depending on the timing, possibly sold at auction, or at least that’s what we do here. Cf. “United States v. 1855.6 Pounds of American Paddlefish Meat” (Nov. 14, 2018) and also cf. “Update: The Paddlefish Defendants Are Now for Sale” (Jan. 28, 2019).
