Catching The Codfather

NARRATION: There's a piece of the Carlos Rafael origin story that I didn't share before, because it feels more relevant here.

When Carlos first arrived in this country, his first job was not cutting fish. It was actually not in the fishing industry at all. It was with a company you may have heard of called Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire is best known today as the conglomerate holding company owned by Warren Buffett, one of the biggest corporations in the world, period. What is less well known is that in a truly bizarre journey of American capitalism, Berkshire Hathaway began as a textile mill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. And right around the time future business icon Warren Buffet was buying up the company, future fishing mogul Carlos Rafael was walking in the front door to ask for his first job. Here’s how Carlos tells the story.

The lady at the window had good news: "we have openings for weavers and doffers." These are tough, physical, sometimes dangerous jobs in a textile mill, and so next, the lady told him: “you have to be 18 to apply.” Carlos admitted he was only sixteen. He had just gotten to the US. But as soon as he walked out he realized he had screwed up: he had told the truth.

So he took a walk along the waterfront, until lunchtime, then he went back and peeked inside the door.

Carlos Rafael: The woman would recognize me, if I go back and ask for a job, she would say, “Hey. About an hour ago you were sixteen, you've just turned eighteen again.” So I was watching, the woman went out the back door to go for lunch and I went in and asked for a job.

NARRATION: This time when the woman at the desk asked how old he was, Carlos said right away: "eighteen."

"When do you want to start?", she said.

"Now."

MUSIC: Enter

Carlos Rafael: A lie will almost catch up with you sooner or later. But it was a clean lie. I mean, you got bad lies and you got a clean lie. I thought that was a clean lie. I was, I could have been anybody. I was just trying to get a job and get ahead in life.

NARRATION:  Something no one whatsoever disputes, is that Carlos is a hard worker. At Berkshire Hathaway, he learned to change out the bobbins and spindles. He learned how to fix the machines, run dozens of them at a time. He got a promotion and a pay raise. And then a year and a half into the job, just as Carlos was coming up on his eighteenth birthday, the manager called Carlos into the office.

MUSIC: Out

Carlos Rafael: He says, “how old are you?” Oh, I says, nineteen, because I had been there for a while. I says, nineteen. He says, “are you sure?” I says, yeah, I am sure. He said, “okay, would you mind bringing your passport tomorrow?” I said, oh shit.

NARRATION: Carlos remembers the manager had his personnel record in his hands, showing how well Carlos had performed at all the various jobs. And for young Carlos, that record seemed like it should have been enough. He had proven himself worthy by every measure that mattered. But when the manager looked up he said: come back when you turn eighteen. Carlos was pissed, and he did not come back. He went down to the docks and he took a job at the fish house, where no one cared how old he was.

Carlos Rafael: No. No. No. No. No. That was like the cowboys and Indians. Ain't nobody look at shit like that.

MUSIC: Enter

NARRATION: I really don't think it's an overstatement to say that for millenia, the water and the waterfront have attracted people who don't like rules. The grip of society is just weaker there. And that is part of the draw.

Carlos Rafael: No rules, no regulations, no nothing. That's why I fit right in there like a –

NARRATION: As one person put it to me: “the west has its cowboys, and we have our fishermen.” And just like in the west, our frontier had to be tamed – fenced off – but not by sheriffs with guns. This frontier was tamed by environmentalists with lawyers.

Carlos Rafael: The, the party was over, these environmental groups. They have, they have a vengeance against people making a decent living and harvest fish.

MUSIC: Post

NARRATION: From GBH News this is The Big Dig. Season 3: Catching the Codfather. I'm Ian Coss.

I've hinted at this idea that fishermen are heavily regulated, that there is a system in place to control their lives and work, which Carlos Rafael set out to break. And that system exists for a reason: to keep the fish from disappearing.

This is Part Three: Punch in the Kisser

MUSIC: Out

BREAK

NARRATION: When fishermen in New Bedford talk about ‘the environmental groups,’ there is really one group in particular they’re often talking about.

Ian Coss: I'm curious, how did you first hear of the Conservation Law Foundation, the CLF?

Speaker: Oof.

NARRATION: All you have to do is speak the three letters, CLF, and before your lips have closed on the ‘f’ sound, you get the long sigh.

Speaker: yeah, they, they're not our friends.

NARRATION: Then the distant look…

Speaker: Ah, CLF.

Ian Coss: Like when did you first hear that name?

Speaker: In a bad dream, I guess. I don’t know.

NARRATION: And of course, the strong opinion.

Ian Coss: What’s your opinion of the CLF?

Vox: They have done nothing positive.

NARRATION: It’s like a ghost that has haunted the docks of New England for decades now. A bad dream they can’t forget, because they are still living it. I am going to tell the story of how all this bitterness between fishermen and environmentalists began. But the irony is that once – before all the fighting started, all the lawsuits and protests – these two groups did not hate each other. In fact, they were allies.

Archival: The Georges Bank fishing area is one of the richest in the world. So far, the intrusion of oil and gas companies into the area has been limited...

NARRATION: This all starts back in the 1970s. After the oil embargo and the gas lines, the Carter administration was looking for new places to drill for oil.  And Georges Bank -- the prized fishing grounds off New England -- quickly emerged as a top candidate.

Angela Sanfilippo: I tell you one thing I remember when they came through the news.

NARRATION: Angela Sanfilippo heard about it right away.

Angela Sanfilippo: It was like, this is not good. Something is going on here.

NARRATION: Sanfilippo did not fish herself, but her husband did. And like most fishermen, he was out at sea weeks or months of the year. So the work of advocacy and politics was often picked up by the fishermen's wives. Sanfilippo led a group of them in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Angela Sanfilippo: And people just went crazy. My phone never stopped ringing. It was, I felt what it was like when somebody dies in a family and people were just calling to give us the condolences

MUSIC: enter

NARRATION: For the fishing industry, which had just recently succeeded in kicking out the foreign fleets, the oil companies were yet another invader, yet another existential threat. But Sanfilippo realized they had allies in this fight.  In the 1970s, the environmental movement was exploding, and locally, there was a scrappy young legal group eager to take on cases. It was called the Conservation Law Foundation, or CLF.

Angela Sanfilippo: And we went to them and say, you need to do something about this. That's how we got to know each other.

MUSIC: Out

Archival: Conservation Law Foundation charged that The United States Departments of Interior and Commerce have failed in their responsibility to ensure….

NARRATION: In early 1978, Conservation Law Foundation, supported by the fishing industry, took the government to court.

Ian Coss: Had there been cases like that before challenging offshore drilling?

Doug Foy: There had, and they had all been lost.

NARRATION: Doug Foy was the president of CLF, which at that time consisted of just four people. Now, they were taking on the combined power of the Federal Government and some of the biggest oil companies in the world. According to the Boston Globe, when CLF submitted their documents to the judge, the judge had to provide his own paper clips.

Doug Foy: So we were, we were beyond scrappy, I'd say. And, if you're gonna pick a case for CLF to sort of be born around, that's the one. Because it's all the biggest players and this little tiny organization coming in saying, wait a minute, wait a minute, what about the fish?

MUSIC: Fade in

NARRATION: Against all odds, Doug Foy and Conservation Law Foundation won that case. But it was just the beginning of a decade-long fight alongside the fishermen’s wives.

Angela Sanfilippo: I mean, the relationship with CLF was great. But we all worked like maniacs,

Archival: November sixth looms as the imminent date that leases for George's Bank Oil

NARRATION: Again and again the government tried to drill.

Archival: The new date for the oil lease sales of Georges Bank.

NARRATION: Again and again, CLF went to court.

Archival: The matter is back in the courts today,

NARRATION: And they kept on winning.

MUSIC: Fade out

NARRATION: Finally, towards the end of the 1980s, the matter made its way to Congress. Doug Foy and Angela Sanfilippo went together to testify.

Angela Sanfilippo: I didn't write anything down. I mean, this, this was also new to me

NARRATION: On either side of them were lawyers and lobbyists for the oil companies. Up in front of them were the senators, many of whom also supported the oil drilling.

Angela Sanfilippo: And I started by saying that we have nothing against oil companies. We understand that's their responsibility to warm the people in our country. And we are grateful for that. But we have our responsibility too. We are fishing people. We supposed to take care the ocean that feeds us every day.

Doug Foy: And then she pointed her finger, she shook her finger at the Senator and said, “and Senator, you need to remember that Georges bank is sacred ground. It's the burial place of 500 Gloucester fishermen.” And she sat back and I leaned over and said, “wow, Angela.” And she leaned to me and said, “that'll get him.”

NARRATION: On her way out of the chamber, Sanfilippo remembers an oil executive stopping her to say: if my wife would fight this hard for my job, I would be in heaven. To this day, there has been no commercial scale oil drilling on Georges Bank. The fishermen won.

But the end of the oil drilling fight also marked a turning point for CLF and the fishermen, the beginning of a new chapter.

Angela Sanfilippo: I don't wanna talk about it.

MUSIC: Transition

NARRATION: A lot of fishermen I've met talk about themselves as stewards of the ocean, caretakers, conservationists -- just like Angela Sanfilippo did. So it was a bitter shock, when just as that oil drilling issue was finally settled, New England fishermen got news that Conservation Law Foundation was filing a new lawsuit, also aimed at protecting Georges Bank from human harm. But the fishermen would not be allies in this suit.

Angela Sanfilippo: When they filed the lawsuit, they forgot all about us.

MUSIC: Out

Archival: They don’t call it the Bay State for nothing. Last year the Massachusetts fishing industry was third in the nation. But according to state officials today, Massachusetts fisheries are sinking fast.

NARRATION: Around the late 1980s, there were increasing signs that the fish stocks off New England were in trouble.

Archival: Haddock are down by thirty percent.

NARRATION: The fishing industry had built all these new boats with the government backed loans, and now those boats were taking a toll.

Linda Despres: there were times when we were on Georges Bank where we would tow the net and nothing would come up, nothing.

NARRATION: Linda Despres worked as a marine biologist with the federal government, which did its own surveys of the ocean using a special research boat.

Linda Despres: it was like a biological desert because everything had been fished out.

NARRATION: Despres remembers that by the late eighties, the tows were getting so bad that she would keep checking and re-checking the gear to make sure it was working right. And sure enough, the net would come up with debris, sand dollars, sea anemones, but no fish.

Archival: Tonight. Are the world's oceans running out of fish?

NARRATION: By the end of the decade, the warning signs were impossible to ignore. But even still, the response from the environmental community was relatively slow on this issue.

John Bullard: The environmental community didn't really realize that three quarters of the planet is wet.

NARRATION: Hopefully you remember the voice of John Bullard, former mayor of New Bedford.

John Bullard: And CLF's the first organization that does realize that.

NARRATION: CLF, the Conservation Law Foundation, the same folks who had stopped oil drilling on Georges Bank, they get interested in all the alarming news about fish stocks -- because of course they know the fishing industry very well. They learned it from the inside. And by 1990, CLF is no longer the scrappy upstart who couldn’t provide their own paperclips. They have their own building, with a staff of close to sixty people. They have real resources.

John Bullard: So they start participating in fishery management meetings

Archival: At least we, the, the council could get some kind of, of a report on that.

NARRATION: Fishery management decisions were made at the time by a regional council in New England, then reviewed and enforced by federal bureaucrats in Washington.

Archival: by the procedure that's being followed.

NARRATION: In case it’s not obvious, regulating fishing is not popular work. In the near term, it hurts fishermen, it hurts consumers. But the benefit of a sustainable fishery takes time to realize – if it happens at all. So the politics are difficult. And given how bad fish stocks had gotten, it looked to Doug Foy like the system simply wasn't working.

Doug Foy: That the council was not able to make the hard decisions.

Archival: Mr. Chairman. Uh, we've been over, uh, a considerable amount of this ground

Doug Foy: I think we also knew that if we didn't manage the fishery, it would be gone.

NARRATION: So the lawyers at CLF started thinking about a new lawsuit, something that could force the council to make those hard decisions. But Doug Foy knew that with this lawsuit, if they were successful, the burden would fall heaviest on his former allies, the fishermen.

Ian Coss: Was it hard to go against the fishing communities after everything you'd been through with the oil drilling?

MUSIC: Enter

Doug Foy: Absolutely. Um, I, you know, they were our friends. They were our allies and we understood. I mean, I think we all understood why this was so passionately important to them. It was their life. And so, yeah, it was, it was always uncomfortable.

NARRATION: But here is the twist in the lawsuit. CLF did not sue the actual fishermen, because the fishermen weren’t breaking the rules. The whole issue was that there weren’t many rules to break. Instead, they sued the federal government. Because tucked inside the Magnuson Act – that foundational law of fishing management – there was a line that said the federal government, in taking responsibility for these coastal waters, also had to prevent “overfishing.” So it was really the federal bureaucrats who had been breaking the law.

In 1991, that lawsuit landed on a desk at the Department of Commerce. And the response was not what you might expect.

Andy Rosenberg: looked at the lawsuit and said, you know what? You're right. We haven't prevented overfishing.

NARRATION: Andy Rosenberg was one of the federal bureaucrats who oversaw fishing at the time…

Andy Rosenberg: Because the science was very clear that these stocks are in terrible shape

NARRATION: And so what happened is the federal bureaucrats basically rolled over in the face of the lawsuit. For people like Rosenberg, it was already clear that the government needed to do more.

Andy Rosenberg: and so the court said, well, okay, if you agree that you haven't prevented overfishing, go away and prevent it.

NARRATION: So the CLF lawsuit meant there would now be a deadline – overseen by a judge – for the regulators to develop a new plan to end overfishing. The deadline was one year.

MUSIC: Out

NARRATION: I think a lot of the animosity towards the environmental groups comes back to how this moment played out. That when CLF saw a problem with the fishing industry, they didn’t bring it to the fishermen themselves. They brought it to the government.

Carlos Rafael: In the minute they started, they just got everything complicated because the government steps in and the fishermen stay in the outside.

NARRATION: At least, that’s how Carlos Rafael sees it.

Carlos Rafael: the best person to be a conservative is the fishermen. They know they have to conserve for the future. They're actually very smart and they know what it takes to survive and to make sure the future survives. But they never give ‘em credit for that because the idea is they're just a dumb fisherman. What do they know? I know everything. Because you got a college degree? Nah.

Ian Coss: It seems like the sad thing is that, in theory, the interests of environmentalists and the interests of the fishing industry should be aligned. Everybody wants healthy fisheries.

Carlos Rafael: That is correct.

Ian Coss: So how did things go so wrong?

Carlos Rafael: Because they keep pushing. Instead of getting to the table and trying to work things out as a good American would do. Let's sit and dialogue and see if we come to a comprehensive situation between the fishermen and the environmental groups. They don't want that because you would solve the problem. If you solve the problem, who needs them anymore?

MUSIC: Enter

Carlos Rafael: So you need to have a crisis for them to take advantage of it. It's like the politicians. They never let a crisis go without taking advantage of it for political use.

Archival: Compared with the good days, twice the effort for half the fish. It’s scary. It’s really scary. It's a doomsday situation if we keep on the way we're going.

NARRATION: In 1991, that sense of crisis was real. This is from a Frontline documentary from that year, which featured fishermen in New Bedford.

Archival: So this is a crisis. Sure it’s a crisis.

John Bullard: It was a crisis

NARRATION: And John Bullard was about to get involved. But not as the Mayor of New Bedford.

MUSIC: Out

NARRATION: So to catch you up on Bullard's story, in the late eighties, as mayor, he took on the environmentally sound but politically foolish project of building a new wastewater treatment plant for the city. Of course, some people were going to have to live next to that sewer plant, and they didn't like it.

John Bullard: and that made me the ex Mayor of New Bedford.

NARRATION: In 1991, Bullard lost re-election.

But out of that tough loss came an opportunity: a call from Congressman Gerry Studds, who had led the charge to kick out the foreign fleets and build up the local fishing industry. Studds wanted Bullard to come to Washington to work on fishery management.

John Bullard: And I said, Gerry, are you nuts? Do I know about fishing? And he said, “uh, John, the people who know about fisheries have screwed everything up. Uh, what you have demonstrated, is you know how to make difficult decisions.”

NARRATION: The 1990s would be a time for difficult decisions.  So Bullard packed up and moved to DC to take a job at the Department of Commerce, which includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the people in charge of fishing. In fact, it was technically Bullard’s boss, the Secretary of Commerce, who CLF had just sued to end overfishing. And so early in the job, Bullard sat down with the whole New England Congressional Delegation, plus the Secretary.

John Bullard: So you had George Mitchell, who was the Senate majority leader from Maine. You know Kennedy, Gerry Studs. You know, you had very powerful people. And they were telling Secretary Brown: Groundfish in New England is a national emergency and you guys better treat it like a national emergency.

NARRATION: The Secretary, Ron Brown, heard out the Congresspeople, and then offered this response:

John Bullard: We will provide some funding. And the point person is John Bullard, you talk to him.

MUSIC: Enter

John Bullard: And, uh, I was driving back from the Capitol and I'm talking to Secretary Brown's chief policy guy and I said, uh, what exactly is a point person anyway? And he said, “a point person means at the end of all this, all the arrow points are in your back, not the Secretary’s. Do you understand?” I said, I understand perfectly.

MUSIC: Out

Archival: The US Commerce Department came up with thirty-million dollars to help New England fishermen.

NARRATION: The strategy that Bullard's boss, the Secretary of Commerce, landed on was to use federal money as leverage, as an incentive really.

John Bullard: John, you are gonna provide economic assistance to these people.

NARRATION: In order to help his colleagues push through new tougher regulation.

John Bullard: Andy, you are going to be tough as nails and you are going to get a management system in place so that we bring back the fish stocks.

NARRATION: The guy whose job it was to be as tough as nails was Andy Rosenberg, the federal bureaucrat we met earlier.

Andy Rosenberg: My job was to, you know, try to push forward on the stuff that nobody liked.

John Bullard: So Andy and I had this like tag team going back and forth. Good cop, bad cop.

Andy Rosenberg: Nobody wants to be regulated. I don't want to be regulated. You don't wanna be regulated. His job was to make it palatable.

John Bullard: I got to play the good cop.

Ian Coss: That time.

John Bullard: Yeah, that time.

MUSIC: Enter

Archival: former mayor John Bullard says change is inevitable and fishermen had better understand that.

 Business as usual is not sustainable. We cannot do what we've always been doing.

NARRATION: The painful medicine that Bullard and Rosenberg were pushing, would be known as Amendment Five. The fifth amendment to the region's fishing rules since the passage of Magnuson. This was the direct result of the CLF lawsuit – the heavy burden that would now fall on the fishermen.

It limited what kinds of nets fishermen could use, and most importantly, how many days a year they could fish. Fewer days at sea meant less fish, which meant less money.

Archival: but they are upset about the upcoming restrictions of the number of days at sea.

NARRATION: That got people's attention.

MUSIC: Out

Angela Sanfilippo: Every time I went to a council meeting when there was a tough issue, I would come home and I wear pain in my teeth

NARRATION: Angela Sanfilippo, who led the Gloucester fishermen's wives, was at those meetings of the regional fishery council, as Amendment Five took shape.

Angela Sanfilippo: And I called the dentist for an appointment. I went to see him and he says, “Angela, nothing is wrong. Tell me what you are doing.” So, it got so bad that. I used to have a moment that night that I didn’t want to talk to people for three days.

NARRATION: Sanfilippo was not opposed to all regulation, she wanted the fishery protected. And I want to stress, this is true of most fishermen I've talked to, they know it's a finite resource that has to be managed.

So at first, Sanfilippo had actually supported the Conservation Law Foundation lawsuit. She knew the CLF people and thought they could prompt some meaningful changes. For example, she supported a limit on how many days every boat could go out to sea.

Angela Sanfilippo: And the same time, there would've been many different ways we could achieve the goals.

NARRATION: But she soon realized that what CLF had set in motion was now very much beyond her control, and beyond what she had envisioned. The fishermen were no longer the stewards of the fish, the advocates for the fish. They had been supplanted. Conservation Law Foundation would now speak for the fish.

Sanfilippo remembers a council official pulling her aside at one point when Amendment Five was still being debated, and warning her:

Angela Sanfilippo: “We are so sorry, but we have no choice. And I tell you, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Prepare yourselves.” And it's the truth.

MUSIC: Transition

NARRATION: In the fall of 1993, with the judge's deadline already passed, the New England Fishery Council approved Amendment Five by a slim vote. The new rules would take effect at the start of the new season: spring of 1994.

Rodney Avila: I fished forty-seven years.

NARRATION: For fisherman Rodney Avila, the new rules would mean the end of a whole way of life, the only life he had ever known.

Rodney Avila: People say to me, “How can you go fishing for that long?” Every time I went out, I passed through them gates at that dike. It was like a sense of freedom. I was free. It was like, nobody's watching me. I’m my own destiny. And I would have an opposite feeling when I got home. When I come through that dike again, coming in, I get a, “phew,” another trip we made, nobody got hurt. Right? We're all set.

Ian Coss: So the freedom and the responsibility go hand in hand.

Rodney Avila: Right. Exactly. Not that I wanna do anything bad, but it's like, you know, I don't have a big brother looking over my shoulder. I can do what I want.

NARRATION: Under Amendment Five, every time Avila left the harbor, the government would be keeping track. Every time he came back, they would be keeping track. He was no longer free to go fish any day he wanted to.

Ian Coss: At that moment, did you feel like you had solved it? That this would put New England on a sustainable path to save the fishery?

John Bullard: I remember, you know, walking by, when I started work down there, they were digging a hole next to the, uh, commerce building for what ended up the EPA Ronald Reagan building. And every day I looked at these guys in hard hats and I said, at the end of the day, they know what they've done. And they know what they've completed and they know it's gonna last several hundred years.

NARRATION: Bullard wasn't so sure he could say the same for his own work.

John Bullard: Is my work going to have a lasting impact? Or am I, you know, holding back the tide.

NARRATION: The winter of 1994 set low temperature records across the country. For fishermen in New England, it meant ice flows in the bay, cracked hulls, snapped lines. The mood was already tense, as everyone waited for the new rules to take effect. But for Carlos Rafael, Amendment Five would be the least of his worries that year.

Ian Coss: When did you first realize that the federal government was coming after you?

Carlos Rafael: The first time?

Ian Coss: The first time.

Carlos Rafael: Oh Jesus…

MUSIC: Out

BREAK

Archival:  Now, from Battleship Cove to New Bedford Harbor: News Center Thirteen. Good evening. I'm Jim Phillips. And I'm Monique Stylos. Thanks for joining us. New England fishermen say new regulations combined with dwindling stocks or putting them out of business today. Fishermen from New Bedford

MUSIC: Enter

NARRATION: In March of 1994, Amendment Five went into effect. Immediately there was confusion about when boats had to have the new nets, where they could get them, and why so many changes were all happening at once.  It had been a tough winter already, and now this.

Archival: The growing protest is tonight's top story

NARRATION: On March 1st, fishermen were all over the local news.

Archival: Fishermen are taking on the government

Fishermen say the government is sinking them

Fishermen say they'll be forced to swallow a big hook

NARRATION: There were shots of boats steaming from New Bedford up to Boston in a massive flotilla.

Archival: Joining the battle today was this armada of fishing vessels from New Bedford.

Archival: Vessels clogged up Boston Harbor

NARRATION: There were fishermen waving signs, fishermen predicting the end of a way of life.

Archival: If they don't want us to fish, just tell us to tie up. Stop playing games

MUSIC: Post

Archival: Amendment Five is a punch in the kisser for the industry

NARRATION: But just as  Sanfilippo had feared, Amendment Five was just the tip of the iceberg.

Because even as it took effect, the government scientists started to publish new data. It showed that in just a few years -- while everyone had debated how to respond to the CLF lawsuit -- fish populations had continued to drop, and quickly. Georges Bank haddock had collapsed. yellowtail flounder had collapsed. And Georges Bank cod was in "imminent danger" of collapse.

Rodney Avila: They announced that they were gonna have to close Georges bank because there was no codfish there.

NARRATION: So just months after the new rules took effect, the Council, still under great pressure to end overfishing, moved to close portions of Georges Bank entirely.

Archival:  six-thousand square miles of Georges bank will be closed for several months, maybe longer.

Rodney Avila: And that meant no fishing for anybody.

NARRATION: Again, Rodney Avila.

Rodney Avila: So everybody went haywire. All these guys, myself included. Hey, we can't close this down.

Archival: Never has there been a ban this long or on this such a large area of ocean.  

Andy Rosenberg: I think the, the closed areas were kind of a shock to the system

NARRATION: Once again, Andy Rosenberg was in the position of bad cop.

Andy Rosenberg: I think it surprised a lot of people. It was a big area. It was eight-thousand square miles of Georges bank that was closed. But it was a system that needed a shock at the time.

NARRATION: The fishermen had fought the foreign fleets to protect Georges Bank. They had fought the oil companies for Georges Bank. They had lost a huge chunk of it to Canada. And now they were losing more.

During that long eventful year of 1994, Rodney Avila decided to come ashore for good. He quit fishing so that he could get involved in fishery management, to advocate for his industry. And he came to share Carlos Rafael’s view that the environmental groups like CLF, that were pushing so much of this change, were not there to help – the fishermen, or the fish.

Rodney Avila: I had no use for any of them conservation. ‘Cause they were just worried about funding for themselves. They weren't worried about anything. Believe me.

NARRATION: Avila remembers once one of the top lawyers from CLF came down to New Bedford to meet with industry reps, and they all went out to eat together.

Rodney Avila: at a restaurant here in New Bedford and she ordered a plate of haddock. And I, I said to her, I says: you’re eating haddock when it's a depleted fish?

NARRATION: For Avila, that said it all.

Rodney Avila: She says, “yeah, but it's good.” I said, so it's good for you, but you don't want us to bring in fish or anybody else to eat. And the haddock wasn't even US haddock, it was Canadian haddock, 'cause there was no regulation on Canadian haddock. It's all caught in the same place. It's all the same thing, She didn't say anything after that.

NARRATION: I don't think it’s fair to paint CLF as a purely cynical actor. I've talked with several people who worked there and I believe them when they say they were trying to help. But  Carlos and Rodney are right that environmental advocacy is a business like anything else. To survive, they have to show results, they have to be respected, maybe feared even.

 One CLF lawyer I spoke with told me that the law is a blunt instrument. When you're up against a big adversary like the federal government or an oil company, and you've got a nice big target to swing at, the law works great. When you are trying to stop something from happening, it works great. But if what you're trying to do is craft an elaborate management system that balances the needs of fish and fishing communities, then the bluntness of the instrument can do a lot of harm even as it does good. The lawyer told me: it's like using an ax to kill a fly.

Carlos Rafael: They might look stupid but they’re not stupid

NARRATION: In 2015, when Carlos was being investigated by undercover IRS agents, he shared with them some stories from his past. Remember, at that time Carlos thought these agents were Russian gangsters, and he was clearly in the mood to brag about his own exploits.

Carlos Rafael: Oh yeah. That was the battle of my life.

NARRATION: One of those stories was about his first major run-in with the law, in 1994.

Carlos Rafael: See, this is the way the ring worked.

IRS Undercover: He’s drawing a ring, I like it.

Carlos Rafael: That was me. That was Carlos Seafoods right here.

NARRATION: According to Carlos, the trouble all started at the auction house. He had worked out some kind of arrangement with boat owners, where he could bid up the fish prices on their boats, but then when the fish was delivered he'd actually pay a little less -- it might still be a decent price, but less than what he'd promised.

Carlos Rafael:  If I made a mistake at a price or something, I'd get a break from the guys. I say, you gotta gimme ten cents off of this shit. And the thing is I could all wheel and deal with the boats because the boats were all Portuguese.

NARRATION: Basically, the arrangement allowed him to bid extremely aggressively and never get burned, while anyone who tried to outbid him would have to really pay for it. And Carlos says there was one competitor in particular who was really getting screwed, again and again.

Carlos Rafael:  I mean, I was banging him from all angles that I could to put him out of his freaking miseries

NARRATION: According to Carlos, that competitor started telling stories to federal prosecutors.

MUSIC: Enter

NARRATION: In January of 1994, they charged Carlos with "price fixing." The accusation was that he was actually colluding with other buyers at the auction to make sure that things went their way. To be clear, Carlos himself has never admitted to price fixing.

Carlos Rafael:  Maybe I walked that line, but I don't think I ever went over the line.

NARRATION: He was content with...price hinting.

Carlos Rafael:  When the guys would say, what you gonna do on prices? He says, “what I’m gonna do is this. It’s not what we gonna do, no no no no.” He goes, “guys, do what you want.” I think I said enough, right? If you’re smart enough, I said enough.

MUSIC: Post

NARRATION: Price fixing on this scale is a serious felony charge -- something that could put him in prison for years and cripple his business with fines; as Carlos said: the battle of his life, up to that point. So Carlos found a high powered Boston lawyer -- a former federal prosecutor himself -- who in Carlos' words, had "callouses in his asshole like a fucking gorilla." Which I think means he was tough.

Ian Coss: So why did you testify in that case?

Carlos Rafael: Because I was only – are you shitting me? The other two are morons. We would've gone to prison even so we didn't do anything.

NARRATION: Carlos was charged along with the owners of two other fish companies, who he allegedly coordinated with on prices. But only Carlos would take the stand.

Carlos Rafael: No, no, no, no. We did a lot of rehearsal in Boston at my attorney's office and all the attorneys at the end, they came to the conclusion I should be the only one to testify. The lawyer says, “look, he's your only hope is this guy, because he’s already done this dance four or five times. He knows how to dance for these guys.”

Archival: Fish landings in New Bedford declined substantially in 1994.

NARRATION: The case dragged on through all of 1994, just as the shock of the new regulations worked their way through the industry. Carlos himself had to lay off more than a hundred people.

At the time, Carlos already owned the biggest fish plant in town, and he was steadily growing his fleet. So the outcome of this price fixing case would be huge. It would be another shock to the whole port. Finally, in 1995, it was time for Carlos to dance.

MUSIC: Enter

Carlos Rafael: So, I asked the judge if I could speak before the trial start. She says, “go, go ahead.” I said, look.

NARRATION: When Carlos got up on the stand, he noticed right away the jury was mostly women, maybe seven out of twelve. So he decided to put on his best sob story

Carlos Rafael: My English is not that good.

NARRATION: He told them that his English was not that great because he didn't go to school here, and that he might be slow to answer the questions, so please be patient. This from the man who haggled for fish at the auction for a living. But he made his appeal.

MUSIC: Out

Carlos Rafael: And I'm in this chair and the lady, she's right there. I mean, she's almost in my lap. The juror. I heard her say to the other girl, “his English is pretty good as far I'm concerned.”

NARRATION: By the way, he told the same exact story to the undercover IRS agents.

Carlos Rafael: Yeah I think his English is pretty good. But they laughed their asses off, so. I got ’em to sympathize with me. I had the jury right off the bat, I had ’em in my corner.  

MUSIC: Enter

NARRATION: The US Attorney's Office does not usually invest in cases that it can't win, but as the prosecutors started calling up their own witnesses from the New Bedford waterfront, the testimony was not as damning as they'd hoped. Maybe it was out of fear, loyalty, or simply respect, but that day in court, the sympathetic side of Carlos Rafael was showing through. The jury found him not guilty.

Carlos Rafael: That was it. I pulled it through.

MUSIC: Post

NARRATION: Afterwards, Carlos ran into the prosecutors in the halls of the courthouse. They had hounded him for over a year at this point, and of course, Carlos didn't have to play nice for the jury any more.

Carlos Rafael: Assholes, look at me. Fuck all of yous.

IRS Undercover: No.

Carlos Rafael: I swear to you.

NARRATION: Again, this is from the undercover tapes.

Carlos Rafael: They were all sitting over there. I says, asshole, look at me. He said, “what?” I said fuck all of yous, you motherfuckers. You know, you miserable motherfuckers, every single one of you - pricks.

IRS Undercover: He's a nice guy.

Carlos Rafael: So you fuck with me, that’s what you get. You thought I was a fucking done deal. Fuck you when the bulk of you motherfuckers came over.

MUSIC: Enter

NARRATION: Carlos walked out the door, went across the street, and bought a $500 shot of King Louis cognac. He had beaten back the government this time, but he would not be able to savor that victory for long.

Archival: John Bullard says, if fishermen think 1994 was bad, 1995 will be worse…

NARRATION: All through the 1990s the shocks kept coming, year after year. More lawsuits, more meetings, more amendments, more protests.

Archival: This vital industry that provides fish to the American families in this country is threatened like it hasn't been threatened for years

NARRATION: Truly, I can't possibly catalogue every flare-up in this conflict.

Archival: She’s speaking from a pile of money. Please keep the conversation – show the courtesy to the speakers.

NARRATION: But when you hear the bitterness in the voices -- from Avila, from Rafael, from Sanfilippo - this is when all that bitterness really started to harden.

Angela Sanfilippo: because they've been betrayed over and over and over again.

NARRATION: That sense of being embattled, besieged, powerless in the force of an overwhelming adversary.

Archival: We saw the dream of our children wiped out that they cannot keep the heritage after seven and eight generation in their family.

NARRATION: Because none of the protests and speeches and media coverage really mattered. The fishermen's struggles didn't really matter. Conservation Law Foundation had legally forced this wave of action, and there wasn't much anyone could do now to stop it. The Wild West days of fishing were officially over.

MUSIC: Fade out

NARRATION: I've been thinking about the timing of Carlos Rafael's life in America, and how he must have experienced this era after coming here with his little plastic TWA wings in search of an opportunity. He immigrated in 1968, at fifteen years old. The next year, along with the rest of the world, he saw an image of the earth from space. The year after that was the first Earth Day, the passage of the Clean Air Act, followed by the Clean Water Act. He came of age in this new era of material limits, of scarcity and conservation. And I just think about how bitter it would be for Carlos to see the Rockefellers and the Bullards of the world, who already made their fortunes in oil and whaling, who never had to worry about environmental groups with high powered lawyers looking over their shoulders. And now just when it's Carlos' turn to make his fortune, the rules of the game change.

Carlos Rafael: They could kill all the whales, get all the, the, the oil from the whales, but we cannot catch a codfish, because they already made their millions. We not entitled to do. That dream, the American dream, they didn't want anybody else to have it but their family. That scumbag, son of a bitch.

NARRATION: And if Carlos resented John Bullard then, well that was just the beginning. Because these two men – the rogue and the regulator – are now on a collision course that will end decades later in yet another Boston courtroom.

MUSIC: Enter

NARRATION: In all that news footage from 1994, there was one clip we found of Carlos, who at that time was a rising force in the industry. He's already balding, but he looks young: no skin under his chin, no clouds in his eyes. Everything about him is sharp, and hungry. But for once, Carlos does not sound cocky and defiant. The reporter asks what all these changes will mean for his business. His eyes dart off to the side for a second, then he says:

Archival: Probably bankrupt. Not only for me, but for the rest of the players at the game.

NARRATION: But later that same year, 1994, Carlos Rafael made a slightly modified prediction, that the new regulations would do one of two things to people in the fishing business: "bankrupt them, or turn them into outlaws."

Carlos Rafael: That's exactly what they did.

NARRATION: That's next time.

Carlos Rafael: Do they think they ever going to stop that? Not in a million years.

MUSIC: Closing song

Catching the Codfather is produced by Isabel Hibbard and myself, Ian Coss. It’s edited by Lacy Roberts. The editorial supervisor is Jenifer McKim with support from Ryan Alderman. And the Executive Producer is Devin Maverick Robins. If you want to hear more stories like this produced by the same team, just search for “The Big Dig,” wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find videos of every episode with incredible archival footage on YouTube, produced by Joanie Tobin and Anny Guerzon.   

Towards the beginning of the episode you heard a few voices who I did not introduce. They are Tony Alvernaz, Jim Kendall and Maggie Raymond. There are several other people who I spoke to for this episode but you don’t hear, and I want to acknowledge them as well: Jennifer Atkinson, Priscilla Brooks, Dan Sosland, Anne Hayden and Phillip Conkling. 

Special thanks, this episode, to the New Bedford Fishing Heritage Center and to Fall River Educational Television for generously sharing their archival material. We also featured a few clips from the excellent film “A Fish Story”, which you can find on YouTube. We’ll put a link in our show notes. 

The artwork is by Bill Miller. Our closing song is “Viva Viva New Bedford” by Jorge Ferreira.

The Big Dig is a production of GBH News and distributed by PRX.