We wholeheartedly agree with your editorial about Carlos Rafael (“Our View: Catching ‘The Codfather’ should just be first step,” May 14).
His criminal actions stole from honest fishermen and undermined the entire groundfishery for cod, flounder and other bottom-dwelling species.
Yet an opportunity exists now to make both fishermen and the fishery itself whole again by taking even bigger steps, and one of his quotes offers inspiration:
“This is America; anything can happen, with money behind it.”
Let’s put his money to work fixing the fishery he badly damaged.
Honest fishermen have not been playing on a level field with the likes of Carlos.
We need to make sure they aren’t put in that position again.
To do that, we must invest some of his illegal gains in fishing’s future by improving dockside monitoring, expanding electronic monitoring and increasing fishermen-scientist collaborations to get better fish counts.
We can transform this moment into an opportunity to create the oversight and infrastructure necessary to make honest, long-term success possible for our iconic fishery.
This can happen, and Carlos Rafael’s money should be behind it.
John Pappalardo
CEO, Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance
Chatham, Massachusetts
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