SMALL COCKLES LAND HARVESTER £1,500 BILL Jones pleaded guilty to the charge before Swansea magistrates, and also admitted taking in excess of his daily quota and refusing to redeposit the excess. But three other charges brought against him, including one of obstructing a fisheries officer, were dropped. Defending, Stuart Ratti said: "Mr Jones has held a licence to gather cockles since 1968, and other than these technical breaches he is someone who had done his utmost to adhere to the regulations of the industry. ”He accepts there were cockles he was not allowed to take by the strict interpretation of the bylaw, which is the reason for his guilty plea." Jones was spotted taking the cockles by fisheries officers on June 14. Further investigations revealed that he had taken 455kg of cockles from the inlet - 105kg more than his licence-permitted daily quota. A significant proportion of the cockles were found to be 17.5 millimetres in size, less than the 19-millimetre minimum which had been set by the fisheries committee.[In fact the minimum size was 17.5mm and 46% of the catch was below this size – DepDir.] The wholesale value of the cockles was estimated to be £160, although the court was told the retail value following processing was likely to be much higher. In Jones's defence, Mr Ratti told magistrates that much of the harvest contained "rushed" cockles, containing sand and shells, which had dramatically increased the total weight of his haul, and that the amount of undersize cockles he had taken was just six per cent over the permitted quota. He added: "At the time he was asked to redeposit the cockles, the tide was coming in and it would have been suicidal to do so." Magistrates fined Jones £500 for each offence, and also ordered him to pay £100 court costs. Charges of taking undersize cockles and gathering cockles without a licence against his son, 19-year-old Benjamin Jones, were dropped. |
||||
