Shell Games

by Craig Welch

  He had confessed to stealing: Details about how much abalone Ferguson poached and its ecological impact came from interviews with Ed Volz; field surveys and a report by biologists Dwight Herren and Don Rothaus in April 1994; and an undated presentation prepared by Rothaus.

  Ferguson returned to the Chinese restaurant: From surveillance videos; J. Cook, narrative report, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, August 1, 1994; Volz to prosecutors, memo, July 29, 1994.

  “the opportunity exists to have a huge impact”: Volz to Captain Ron Swatfigure, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, memo, August 10, 1994.

  Ferguson’s girlfriend screamed: Volz, interview with author; Volz to Swatfigure, memo, September 14, 1994; incident summary, Port Townsend Fire Department, September 11, 1994; Washington Boat Accident Report, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, September 11, 1994; follow-up report, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, October 12, 1994.

  That fall and winter, Ferguson went back undercover: Ferguson’s work undercover is outlined in weekly (sometimes daily) memos written by Volz to prosecutors from early spring 1994 to March 1995.

  CHAPTER TWO: LARGER THAN LIFE

  on a sunny day five months later: Descriptions of Doug Tobin’s first meeting with Dennis Lucia, including such details as the manager moving about behind while they spoke, came from a series of interviews with Lucia.

  Gray whales, frequent visitors to Puget Sound: See: Linda Woo, “‘There He Is. He’s Cool.’ Gray Whale Charms Admirers Along Purdy Spit,” News Tribune, April 6, 1995.

  Doug Tobin had always been big: Descriptions of Tobin come primarily from my interactions with him. The direct quotes he used during interviews with me. His hair was gray when I met him, but the dark curled-up ringlets can be seen in earlier photographs and surveillance footage. Similarities to Louis XIV are most noticeable in a photograph taken by federal agents in 1996. Other details came from: Detective Paul Buerger, interview with author; Nancy Lyles, interview with author and an April 8, 1987, letter she wrote to the judge before Tobin’s sentencing on manslaughter charges; Tobin’s fisherman friend Bob Newman, letter to court, undated; Doug’s mother, Murray Tobin, letter to court, April 21, 1987; Steve Sigo, interview with author; other friends who were interviewed by the author.

  “Nothing can exceed the beauty of these waters”: See: Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841 and 1842, vol. 4, chapter 9, pp. 325–326. Full quote: “Nothing can exceed the beauty of these waters, and their safety: not a shoal exists within the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, or Hood’s Canal, that can in any way interrupt their navigation by a seventy-four gun ship. I venture nothing in saying there is no country in the world that possesses waters equal to these.”

  The Sound is awash in the beautiful and the bizarre: The most amazing details about fish in Puget Sound were culled from the University of Washington’s “Key to the Fishes of Puget Sound,” a database of fish species compiled by Shannon DeVaney and Theodore W. Pietsch, and hosted by the University of Washington Fish Collection at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

  The geoduck is a Pacific Northwest celebrity: Quote from the boutique seafood dealer is from the Web site of fish wholesaler Marx Foods: http:// www.marxfoods.com.

  cable television show host tweaked: Mike Rowe, host of the Discovery Channel’s Dirty Jobs, July 18, 2006.

  “God does have a sense of humor”: Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1989.

  Such attention can seem excessive: C. Lynn Goodwin, Brent Vadopalas, Alex Bradbury, Don Rothaus, interviews with author.

  Geoducks produce growth rings: Are Strom et al., “Preserving low-frequency climate signals in growth records of geoduck clams (Panopea abrupta),” Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 228, nos. 1–2 (2005): 167–178; Are Strom et al., “North Pacific climate recorded in growth rings of geoduck clams: A new tool for paleoenvironmental reconstruction,” Geophysical Research Letters 31, no. 6 (2004).

  In a speech during the faculty’s founding retreat: Quotes from the botany instructor are from the Emmy-nominated documentary Three Feet Under: Digging Deep for the Geoduck Clam, written and directed by Seattle native Justin Bookey, 2003.

  Through the pinking gray of dawn: Geoduck harvest descriptions come from tagging along on several trips with geoduck divers between 2003 and 2008.

  When it came to training divers: Lucia, interview with author.

  That environment can kill: Details of diving accidents came from fatality records, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, in the deaths of Leo Blanchette, James Plaskett, and Todd Buckley, 1988–1990.

  A gray whale once nosed: Mark Mikkelsen, interview with author. Other interactions between divers and sea life came from additional interviews with a least a dozen geoduck divers.

  Almost immediately, Doug said, he saw corruption: Doug Tobin, interview with author. The quote about dive shops was said to me, during an interview in the Pierce County Jail in 2003. Details of the crimes Tobin said that he saw are outlined by Borden, in a case-file memo, July 12, 1996.

  the Sound’s waters had provided a seafood bounty: For details about the declining health of Puget Sound, see annual reports of the Puget Sound Partnership, a state government agency tasked with cleaning up the Sound. I reported interactions between steelhead and sea lions for this story: “Northwest Sea Lions Teach Humans the Folly of Fighting Mother Nature,” Pacific Northwest, Sunday magazine of the Seattle Times, September 7, 2008.

  They heard poachers cut hull sections from their boats: Details of the crimes the detectives were seeing came from several dozen case files from 1994 to 1996.

  CHAPTER THREE: CLAM KINGS

  It began with a voyage in 1838: General information about the Wilkes Expedition comes from Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition During the Years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841 and 1842, vol.4, pp.300–564. Melville drawing upon Wilkes for Moby-Dick is from: Nathaniel Philbrick, Sea of Glory (New York: Penguin Books, 2003). Description of specimen collections and subsequent theft is from Richard I. Johnson’s five-volume Papers on Mollusca, 1942–2003, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Mollusk Department, Harvard University; from Harley Harris Bartlett, “The Reports of the Wilkes Expedition, and the Work of the Specialists in Science,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 82, no. 5 (June 29, 1940): 650–655; and from William H. Dall, “Some American Conchologists,” Proc. Biol. Soc. Wash. 4 (1888): 95–134. Correspondence between Joseph Couthouy and President Andrew Jackson from Serial Set, vol. no. 327, Session, vol. no. 7, 25th Congress, 2nd Session, H. Doc 147, February 7, 1838, pp. 47–247. For specific discussions of Panopea generosa see: Augustus Addison Gould, “Introduction to the molluscs of the exploring expedition,” Narrative 12 (1857): introduction and pp. 385–386.

  The geoduck plucked from the mudflats at Nisqually: Until recently, Panopea generosa, the clam first found in the Nisqually Delta and described by Gould, and Panopea abrupta, a pair of fossilized shells found near the Columbia River the same year and described by another scientist in 1849, were thought to be the same animal. For years, the preferred name among scientists for the geoduck has been the earlier of the two monikers: Panopea abrupta. Struggling to trace the geoduck through literature, I sought the help of shellfish biologist Brent Vadopalas. I kept getting confused about which clam was really the first found by scientists. He took it upon himself to figure it out. After his own investigation, Vadopalas wound up proving that Panopea abrupta was in fact not even a geoduck at all, but a completely different fossil species. The resulting scientific paper, “The proper name for the geoduck: Resurrection of Panopea generosa (Gould, 1850), from the synonymy of Panopea abrupta (Conrad, 1849),” by Brent Vadopalas, Theodore W. Pietsch, and Carolyn S. Friedman, has been accepted for publication in the winter of 2010 in the journal Malacologia. It returns Panopea generosa to its place as the true name for the geoduck.

  Shellfish had been cen
tral: Curtis W. Marean, M. Bar-Matthews, J. Bernatchez, et al., “Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene,” Nature 449 (2007): 905–908; John Noble Wilford, “Key Human Traits Tied to Shellfish Remains,” New York Times, October 18, 2007.

  From the opening of the Oregon Territories: “Acres of Clams” was written by Tacoma judge Francis D. Henry, and its lyrics are printed on Ivar’s menus. For more on Olympia oysters see: Rowan Jacobsen, The Living Shore: Rediscovering a Lost World (New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2009).

  One column of a geoduck’s siphon: Vadopalas, interview with author.

  “Its flesh is, I think, the most delicious”: Hemphill quote in John A. Ryder, “The geoduck,” Scientific American, April 29, 1882.

  Skillfully cooked: R. E. C. Stearns, “The edible clams of the Pacific coast,” Bulletin of the United States Fish Commission, vol. 3, no. 23, October 19, 1883.

  Geoducks reached epicurean heights: untitled, New York Times, February 23, 1883; and “The Ichthyophagous Dinner,” New York Times, October 1, 1884.

  a shellfish’s popularity sometimes came at a price: Manier quote from “County Game Commissioner Submits Plan to Darwin,” Morning Olympian, July 7, 1916.

  It would take a folksinger: Ivar’s life history comes from: Dave Stephens, Ivar: The Life and Times of Ivar Haglund (Seattle: Dunhill Publishing, 1988), pp. 51–69, 119–123; Seattle historian Paul Dorpat, interview with author; Bob Donegan, president of Ivar’s, interview with author; Virginia Kraft, “A High Time on a Low Tide,” Sports Illustrated, December 14, 1964.

  During one excavation in 1960: The discovery of geoducks by Robert Sheats and the subsequent efforts to establish a clam-fishing industry are detailed in Robert Sheats, letter to Cedric Lindsay, Washington Department of Fisheries, January 5, 1967; Sheats, letter to John A. Biggs, Director, Department of Ecology, December 1, 1971; Sheats correspondence, letter to Eric F. Hurlburt, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, June 16, 1981; Sheats, unpublished essay, 1977; Sheats family photographs, 1970; Verda Averill, “Poulsbo Family Begins First Commercial Harvest of Geoducks,” Kitsap County Herald, June 3, 1970.

  Sheats loved this stretch of water: Robert C. Sheats, One Man’s War: Diving as a Guest of the Emperor, 1942 (Flagstaff, AZ: Best Publishing Co., 1998); and “Project Sealab II Report: An Experimental 45-Day Undersea Saturation Dive at 205 Feet,” U.S. Office of Naval Research, 1967.

  Sheats’s discovery might have remained: Brian Hodgson’s early work with clams came from: Don Webster, interview with author and deposition, Kitsap County Superior Court, November 25, 1975; Jerry Elfendahl, interview with author; Carl Sheats, interview with author; Brian Hodgson, testimony at trial, State of Washington vs. Rod Carew, 1977; “Management Plan for the Puget Sound Commercial Geoduck Fishery,” State of Washington, September 1981; “Which Shall It Be: Geoduck or King Clam?” Seattle Times, September 13, 1970; James Bylin, “Lovers of Shellfish Take Heart! Geoduck, or Gooeyduck, Is Here,” Wall Street Journal, August 3, 1970; David Miyauchi, Max Patashnik, and George Kudo, “Fish protein used to bind pieces of minced geoduck,” Proceedings of the National Shellfisheries Association 63 (1973); Hodgson himself told the story about driving over geoducks in his truck in: Susan Herrmann Loomis, “The State’s ‘King Clam’ Has Been a Northwest Regional Delicacy for Centuries,” Seattle Times, May 26, 1985. Quotes from Hodgson are from the same story.

  Hodgson asked one of his best customers: Shiro Kashiba, interview with author; Webster, interview with author.

  Like few other civilizations, the Chinese express: Most helpful in understanding Chinese banquet foods were: Quentin Fong, interview with author; Harry Yoshimura, Mutual Fish Company, interview with author; Mark Wen, interview with author; and, of course, Claude Tchao, whose tale of geoduck discovery was confirmed by some of his competitors. Also helpful were Tony Wong, whose father was the other Vancouver geoduck entrepreneur, and an e-mail exchange with Lawrence Lai, in Hong Kong. See also: Thomas Liu, “An Insight into the Shanghai Market for Imported Live Seafood,” World Ocean Trading Co. Ltd., Shanghai, Marketing and Shipping Live Aquatic Products 221, University of Alaska Sea Grant, January 3, 2001; LaVerne E. Brabant, “Peoples Republic of China Exporter Guide, 1999,” U.S. Consulate General, Shanghai, for Foreign Agricultural Service Global Agriculture Information Network, U.S. Department of Agriculture, December 15, 1999. For more on the role of Chinese food through history see: K. C. Chang, Food in Chinese Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977); Fuchsia Dunlop, Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Memoir of Eating in China (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); Jennifer 8. Lee, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food (New York: Twelve Books, 2008).

  Between 1983 and 1993: Lawrence Lai, “Marine fish production and marketing for a Chinese food market: A transaction cost perspective,” Aquaculture Economics & Management, September 2005, pp. 289–316.

  The number of toy factories: “A Day in the Life…of China: Free to Fly Inside the Cage,” Time, October 2, 1989.

  geoduck fishing remained tightly controlled: For more anecdotes about Hodgson breaking the rules see: State of Washington vs. Brian Hodgson, Case No. 88-1-05697-4, amended certification of probable cause.

  his divers told a fussy regulator: Tom Gillick, former shellfish program manager, Department of Natural Resources, memorandum of interview with Assistant Attorney General Jay Geck, April 28, 1989.

  In June 1987, a band of protesters: Dick Clever, “Clamscam: Media Got Conned,” Seattle Times, June 11, 1987; and “ClamScam: One Shell of a Hoax,” New York Post, June 11, 1987. For more on the practical joker himself see: http://www.joeyskaggs.com.

  Rumors about Hodgson overfishing: Dee Norton, “Giant Clam Industry Scrutinized by Feds,” Seattle Times, February 16, 1982; Rod Carew, testimony, federal grand jury, U.S. District Court, Seattle, January 19, 1982; Rod Carew, testimony, state court of inquiry, 1987; Marilyn Brenneman, interview with author and copies of her written opening statement in trial; Detective Kevin Harrington, interview with author; Clifford Bergerson, enforcement report, January 4, 1987.

  Before Hodgson was sentenced, prankster Joey Skaggs: Joey Skaggs, letter to State Senator Mike Kreidler, March 13, 1989.

  CHAPTER FOUR: THE FED

  Kevin Harrington shot south: Details of the meeting between Harrington, Severtson, Borden, and Tobin are outlined in Borden’s July 12, 1996, case-file memo. Details about Severtson’s reaction to Tobin are from Harrington and Severtson, in interviews with the author. Details about the potential suspects come from copies of the flow chart.

  This seafood crime wave was gathering steam: Keith B. Richburg, “China to Buttress Hong Kong Police—But to What End?” Washington Post, May 4, 1997; several stories in Wen Wei Po, a Chinese-language newspaper in Hong Kong, detailed current and past seafood smuggling operations from Hong Kong to Kat O. The stories ran December 8, 2003; April 10, 2005; and November 10, 2005. Similar reports appeared in South China Daily in July 2002; and in reports by Guangdong Province’s Oceanic and Fisheries Administrator. All were translated for me by freelance writer Ting-I Tsai. Geoduck smuggling clearly continues, as evidenced by this: “Sub-bureau of Anti-Smuggling of Panyu Customs House Intercepted and Captured Smuggled Seafood,” press release, Guangzhou Customs District, People’s Republic of China, March 16, 2007.

  a half-billion dollars in American wildlife: Timothy J. Larsen, “The Chinese market for Colorado and the U.S. agricultural exports: Analysis of the potential impacts of the establishment of permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with China and Colorado’s agricultural industry,” Colorado Department of Agriculture, September 28, 2000; Joe Haberstroh, “China Cuts Tariff on Apples—Move Will Mean More Exports for State Growers,” Seattle Times, January 14, 1994; Joe Haberstroh, “Ripe for the Exporting—State Industry Eyes a Possibly Fruitful China Market with Growing Anticipation, Caution,” Seattle Times, February 6, 1994; Jennifer Hieger, “Apple Gr
owers Could Reap Fruits of China’s WTO Entry,” Yakima Herald-Republic, April 16, 1999.

  Volz and Harrington had worked with Severtson before: Volz and Harrington, interviews with author.

  But Severtson could also alienate his colleagues: Andy Cohen, Al Samuels, Wayne Lewis, Volz, and Harrington, interviews with author.

  Severtson’s disdain for administrators: Wayne C. Lewis, Sea Cop (Oregon: River Graphics, 2004), pp. 109–110.

  But his investigative prowess was legendary: Ibid., pp. 164–179; Severtson, interview; Lewis, interview; Cohen, interview; Hal Bernton, “Cargo Ship’s ‘Milk Run’ Becomes an Adventure,” Anchorage Daily News, July 27, 1989.

  typed his reports in his own small office: Samuels, interview; Cohen, interview.

  Severtson had great confidence: Severtson, interview.

  CHAPTER FIVE: METAMORPHOSIS: LIFE UNDERCOVER

  Sell a dozen San Francisco garter snakes: Sam Jojola, interview with author.

  Supplying medical researchers with primates: USA vs. LABS of Va. Inc. (02-CR-0312). More than one thousand crab-eating macaques had been shipped out of Indonesia over several years, some just a few weeks old.

  Newcomer began figuring all this out: Entire investigative file, World Insect, Inc. (INV: 2003102546), and court file, USA vs. Kojima (06-CR-00595), including: narrative reports, audio recordings of undercover conversations, undercover video, and copies of Skype video conferences. All quotes and conversations with Hisayoshi Kojima are verbatim from audio and video recordings, except where noted. Information also came from: Ed Newcomer, interview with author; Jojola, interview; John Brooks, interview; John Gavitt, interview; Jerry Smith, interview; Ernest Mayer, interview; Erin Dean, interview; Lisa Nichols, interview; Skip Wissinger, interview. Descriptions of bug fair come from videotapes of earlier fairs, advertisements, and from a brief undercover video shot by Newcomer.