Initiated by the Shelburne Department of Fishery and Oceans (DFO), a team of ten DFO officers from Shelburne, Liverpool and Barrington executed a search warrant on a Shelburne County resident after suspecting the man of forging a lobster license.

“As far as I know this is the first time that something like this has ever been done,” said Chris Sperry of the DFO Shelburne Detachment.

On April 10, after a check of a lobster license, a Shelburne fishing vessel in area 33 was apprehended for illegally fishing lobster and an undisclosed amount of lobsters were seized.

The fisherman claimed he had bought the designated operating privileges from another fisherman and did not know the license was a fake.

It was on April 13 that the ten officers searched a fisherman’s residence seizing a number of items and documents including computers and computer related devices.

During the investigation the DFO officers suspected that a fisherman who was a designated operator for a particular lobster license in area 33 had manufactured and prepared a duplicate lobster license and had then sold the designated operating privilege to another fisherman.

“It is going to be a very in depth investigation,” said Sperry, “I would suspect it’s going to take some time before we actually know all the details.”

There are various fishery act charges pending including illegally buying and selling lobsters, fishing lobster without a license, fishing lobster without a designated operator on board, altering documents and possible criminal code charges.

All charges are pending and an investigation is ongoing.

The illegal fishing using a forged license has worried the department.

“It did raise a lot of red flags for us,” said Sperry, “potentially there could be other cases that are happening in the area. Maybe it did occur in the past and it may be occurring presently.”

“We may have to put measures in place to help protect against this type of thing.”