A Riverside County man was cited Sunday for
allegedly poaching 47 California spiny lobsters from Laguna Beach waters within Southern California's new marine sanctuary zone that went into effect Jan. 1.
State Department of Fish and Game warden popped Marbel A. Para, 30, of Romoland, off Heisler Park for unlawful take of lobster, illegal possession of
lobster, holding more than the legal limit of seven lobsters per
diver
and other poaching allegations.
]
The
Laguna Beach sanctuary is among the 350 square miles of protected marine areas
from Santa Barbara County to the Mexico border that went into effect this month to prohibit or limit fishing while depleted marine populations recover. But the waters off
Heisler Park have been closed to lobster fishing for
years.
Para and a companion were diving off Laguna Beach shortly after midnight
when wardens stopped them. The companion was not cited.
Many of the seized spiny lobsters were below the legal size limit. They were all photographed and released back into the ocean. The Department of Fish and Game says spiny lobsters
have been a frequent target of poachers recently.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.