Contact: Teri Frady             FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
         Scott Smullen          1/15/98

Gloucester, Mass. -- James D. Gillikin and Gillikin Seafood, Inc. of Beaufort, North Carolina are barred from handling federally-regulated fish for the time being and may lose their federal dealer permit for five years, as well as pay nearly half a million dollars in fines for improperly reporting landings of summer flounder last year, said the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

If found guilty in civil court of violating fishery regulations and maximum fines are levied, Gilliken and his company would have to pay the most significant penalty ever paid by a dealer for damaging regional attempts to recover summer flounder stocks.

"It's important that people who are wrongfully reaping profits from the sacrifices of legal operators be dealt with swiftly and decisively," says NOAA attorney Charles R. Juliand, who is in charge of the case. "Timely, accurate reporting is extremely significant in fisheries managed by quotas. This case represents nearly 300,000 pounds of damage to summer flounder recovery as well as possible deductions from subsequent state quota allotment to make up for it."

The case was made following investigation by NOAA Fisheries Enforcement special agents with assistance from the North Carolina Marine Patrol.

Juliand filed notices on Dec. 31 denying Gillikin renewal of the dealer permit required to legally handle summer flounder. Rather than risk additional stock damage caused by similar violations this year, said Juliand, the government simply did not renew Gillikin's dealer permit pending settlement of the matter.

NOAA is seeking a five-year dealer permit suspension, which would effectively remove Gilliken from business as a dealer in federally regulated fish species for that time. Also, the government has assessed fines for each count, ranging from $7,500 to $18,000, totaling $483,000.

NOAA, which is responsible for enforcing the nation's federal fishery regulations, claims that the dealer failed to report 188,806 pounds of summer flounder landings and reported another 108,768 pounds months later than required.

Summer flounder are caught during the winter in the southerly portion of their range, and January is typically a high month for landings in North Carolina. North Carolina exceeded its commercial summer flounder quota in each of the last three years.

Dealers are required to report their landings weekly and deliver them to NMFS within three days of the last day of the reporting week. Of 35 purchases made in January of 1997 detailed in the charges, the government alleges that Gillikin failed to report 21. It also alleges that the firm filed late reports for 14 others: reporting one purchase as two, one in March and one in July; and reporting 13 purchases in April.

Gillikin has until the end of January to respond to the charges, which are civil, not criminal.