Three men are charged in federal court with illegally transporting Alaska crab to sell in Washington. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Alaska says Kyle Potter and Justin Welch caught crab in Southeast Alaska this spring and moved them to Seattle at the direction of Potter’s dad, Corey.
The federal indictment says Corey Potter owns the two fishing vessels involved, which were run by his son, Kyle, and Welch. One of the boats is the 97-foot Arctic Dawn, which has been docked in Petersburg this spring but is registered to a Kodiak residence.
The two captains participated in the Southeast Tanner and golden king crab fisheries in February and March, harvesting over 7,000 pounds. Corey Potter allegedly directed the two captains to transport the crab to Seattle to fetch a higher price.
By the time they arrived, according to the charges, a lot of the king crab was already dead and about 4,000 pounds of Tanner had to be thrown out because of bitter crab syndrome. Bitter crab is a common parasite and is sorted out at Alaska ports when fishermen sell their catch. It causes the crab to taste bad but isn’t harmful.
The federal indictment says Kyle Potter and Welch never recorded their harvests at an Alaska port, which is required by state law. And they took the undocumented crab through Canadian and Washington waters, which violates a federal law called the Lacey Act.
All three men are charged with unlawfully transporting fish or wildlife, with Corey Potter facing two counts and the others facing one count each. Their first court appearance is set for May 2 in U.S. District Court in Anchorage.
In February, Justin Welch was fined $1,000 in state court for using king crab pots that don’t allow smaller crabs to escape. He was put on probation for one year. Corey Potter and his family, including Kyle, were rescued in 2016 from their 74-foot tender boat, the Ambition, when it sank near False Pass in the Aleutian Islands.
Attorneys for the men are not listed in the federal indictment. The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment further on the case.
