CODFATHER_web_29
After David Goethel, front, pulls his boat into the Yankee Fishermen's Coop in Seabrook, New Hampshire — one of the few places to access local seafood from local fishermen — he and Justin MacLean, of Dover, N.H., unload their day's catch. A combination of clumsy regulatory practices, over fishing by large commercial enterprises and a market monopoly from large fishing corporations have economically knee-capped New England's fishermen and forced a mass abandonment of the industry. The recent arrest of Carlos Rafael, a Portuguese-born fishing mogul with a fleet of over 40 boats operating out of New Bedford, Mass., has highlighted corruption, environmental abuse and regulatory shortcomings that allow a few large operations like Carlos Seafood to monopolize, through legal mandate, the fishing industry. Goethel says that he doesn't blame Rafael, also known as "The Godfather", for "cooking his books", so much as he blames the government for instituting "Catch Shares", which he says bad behavior, the degradation of fishing communities, and corruption.