Some crimes, in fact, seem to spring from a James Bond novel. They know by calling on the radio if there's a warden at the dock. There's counter-surveillance on all of the patrol officers who work up and down the coast. But it's not government workers who fill out the forms. It's fish dealers and, sometimes, fishermen themselves.
Large catches can become small ones.
Sometimes, there's no reporting at all. On average, 57.5 tons of sea life disappear every day in California through fraudulent accounting, according to Blakely, the Fish and Game tax examiner. Even fishermen acknowledge it happens. When I was trawling, we'd bring in 20,000 pounds. You unload 8,000 pounds and put it in on the receipt.