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MIAMI — A Florida Keys commercial fisherman could lose his boat and do federal prison time if convicted of charges that he illegally poached thousands of spiny lobsters with traps that damaged coral reefs and sea grasses in sensitive marine waters.
More than 6,000 lobster tails were confiscated after David W. Dreifort, 41, was arrested this week, about 1,000 times the legal bag limit for Florida’s just-completed lobster sport diving mini-season. And officials said most of them were taken from protected seabeds of the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.
At up to $20 a pound, this one batch of confiscated lobster tails could have been sold for about $30,000.
