![]() Peters can barely make out a boat with a couple people on board. It’s another boat that’s running without any lights. He’s looking for small red dots offshore that could be a boat of divers illegally harvesting geoducks. Olson scans a fraction of that shoreline appearing on the radar screen. It is the hardest place to patrol, but we’ve got to give it a shot.” “The harvest location is the only place we’re locked solid in terms of if we caught someone poaching. Photo by Katie Campbell/KCTS9/EarthFix“We’re looking for anything and everything on the water tonight,” Olson says. Erik Olson, WFDW, patrols Puget Sound by night looking to catch shellfish poachers in the act. His partner, Officer Carly Peters, peers through night-vision binoculars, calling out directions to avoid floating logs or buoys. Erik Olson of Washington State Fish and Wildlife is at the helm. The boat is a Fish and Wildlife patrol vessel and Sgt. The motor’s hum and the faint spray of bioluminescence in the boat’s wake is the only evidence of its presence. A boat runs blind through the inky blackness - no onboard lights, no radar signals announcing the location. Clouds blot out the moon and the stars, making it nearly impossible to tell where the sky ends and the water begins. Those soaring prices have created an incentive for poachers back in Puget Sound, giving rise to an international black market.Ībout 90 percent of the geoducks harvested in the United States are sent to Asia, where they are served raw at sushi restaurants in Japan, used in soups and stews in Korea, or cooked in a fondue-style hot pot in China. Rising demand, especially among China’s growing middle class, has sent geoduck retail prices in Asia to as high as $150 per pound. Graphic from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife ![]() At the same time, the overall value of geoduck prices has risen dramatically. The total amount of geoduck catch reported by fishers (landings) has remained fairly steady since a 2.7 percent harvest rate was established in the 1980s. ![]()
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