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- Ellsworth American, 26 Feb 1981, Thu ·Page 3
Lobster Dealer Found Guilty
By Katherine Heidinger A Stonington lobster dealer was found guilty Tuesday afternoon by a Hancock County Superior Court jury and was subsequently fined $2,895 for 100 oversized lobsters found in his crates.
Maine statutes prohibit catching, selling or possessing lobsters that do not fall within the legal measure. Regulations state lobsters cannot be more than five inches in length from the eye socket to the rear end of the body shell.
When marine patrolmen visited L. Clyde Conary's lobster dealership in Stonington on Sept. 27, 1979, they found 100 oversized lobsters, and the case has been pending ever since.
Tuesday morning in Superior Court, Conary's jury trial began before Justice Morton A. Brody. Conary, a 79-year-old resident of Sunset, has been a dealer in Stonington for the past 34 years. He testified in court that he has been inspected "hundreds of times by wardens, and they've never found any illegal sized lobsters."
Conary told the jury he could tell an oversized or undersized lobster "just by looking at it," and emphasized, "I don't buy those kind of lobsters, never have."
However, prosecutor Bronson Platner of the District Attorney's Office, argued that marine patrol- men inspected 10 crates tied to Conary's lobster car and found 100 oversized ones after they examined the lobsters with a double guage measure.
Marine Resource Patrol Officers Orville Nisbet and Alpheus Dorr testified for the State and said they had gone to Conary's on Sept. 27, 1979, to buy female lobsters.
The Department of Marine Resources was involved in a seed-lobster program at the time, and the two officials were visiting dealers in an effort to buy female lobsters with seeds on them.
Nisbet, who has been a warden in the Stonington area for 12 years, said while he was at Conary's business, he noticed 10 crates tied to the lobster car. "I proceeded to haul one of the crates because I could see large antenna and walking legs sticking out of it. I opened the cover, and I saw lobster I knew were larger than lawful," Nisbet told the jurors.
The patrolman said he measured the lobsters and found they were, indeed, oversized, then asked one of Conary's employees whose lobsters they were.
"Richard Nevells, who works for Conary, was there with me on the float. He told me the lobsters were Clyde's and said 'We just got through packing them for shipment out,'" said Nisbet.
The two marine patrolmen hauled each crate after they spoke with Conary. They said in five crates they found 100 oversized lobsters and only two legal ones. The illegal lobsters were disbanded and thrown back into the water by the wardens.
"The first five crates were mine, but I don't know anything about those other five crates with the oversized lobsters," Conary testified, adding that he is not physically able to handle the crates and depends on his two laborers to tend the business on the float.
"I told the wardens the lobsters didn't belong to me. Only five of those crates were mine; the other five on the line I don't know whose they were," said the defendant.
Defense Attorney Edward Dardis of Damariscotta tried to show the jury fishermen often leave crates of their own lobsters tied to Conary's car, and that the five crates in question were not Conary's.
Both of Conary's employees, Nevells and Edgar Ray, testified that their employer had never asked them to pack illegal lobsters.
But the Superior Court jury found otherwise after deliberating the case a couple of hours Tuesday afternoon before returning its guilty verdict.
According to Maine statutes violation of the lobster regulations brings a fine of $25, plus $10 for each of the first five illegal lobsters and $30 for each lobster thereafter. Conary was given credit for one lobster in question and was fined $2,895 instead of $2,925 for the offense.
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