A Sunshine Coast couple was given until May 4, 2027, to pay fines totalling $6,500 for three charges related to removing an estimated 800 oysters from a closed fishing area near Sechelt in April 2024. The sentences were imposed May 1 by Judge Steven Merrick in Sechelt Provincial Court.
The 64-year-old wife pleaded guilty to catching/retaining a prohibited species of seafood and was fined $4,000. She also entered a guilty plea to harvesting seafood without a licence and was fined $500 for that offence. The 82-year-old husband pleaded guilty to possessing illegal seafood and was fined $2,000. Both had been charged with all three of the offences, but charges against the husband were stayed on the counts his wife admitted to, and vice versa. No victim surcharge was imposed on either defendant.
Federal Crown prosecutor Chelsea Gardner stated that the oysters were taken from an area where harvesting was banned due to a biotoxin closure. She noted that no forfeiture order had been included as the oysters were returned to the beach by officers on the same day they were harvested.
Defence lawyer Darcy Lawrence told the court his clients were “very remorseful” for their actions. He said when he asked the wife what she had planned to do with that volume of oysters, she indicated she thought she could preserve them and that she, “simply got carried away” when gathering them. She told him she believed that her freshwater fishing licence allowed her to pick oysters, but admitted that she did not check the regulations.
Lawrence stated that an email he received from the husband read that the two were “deeply sorry for what we have done."
“Good people make mistakes. I truly believe you are great people and I am sorry the penalty has to be so high. It is the proper penalty and the penalty that I must impose,” Merrick said in delivering his verdict.
“While I might see each of you at a grocery store, I am 100 per cent sure you will never be back in this court room, as I know the two of you don’t intentionally break the law… I know that you feel ashamed but you do that because you are good people.”
