CSI Dunedin: Scientists help snare rogue fishing boat

The forensic chemistry skills of scientists (from left) David Barr, Dr Malcolm Reid, Dr Claudine...
The forensic chemistry skills of scientists (from left) David Barr, Dr Malcolm Reid, Dr Claudine Stirling and team leader Associate Prof Russell Frew, of the University of Otago, are in demand after a big catch. Photo by Gerard O'Brien.
A team of Dunedin scientists and their forensic chemistry skills have helped hook one of New Zealand's worst illegal fishing offenders.

In a first-of-its-kind investigation, the Iso-trace Research Unit, led by Associate Prof Russell Frew, alongside Dr Malcolm Reid, Dr Claudine Stirling and David Barr, of the University of Otago, used a unique forensic analysis method to link minute samples of blue paint to the offenders' fishing vessel.

The paint was recovered from under the scales of two dead fish, found among an estimated 1000 snapper floating over 4000sq m in the eastern Bay of Plenty after they were illegally dumped in August 2009.

Tauranga commercial fisher Ross Harvey was convicted in the Tauranga District Court on Tuesday and fined $27,000, after he pleaded guilty to being a party to the dumping of legal-size snapper by West Coast Fishing Ltd.

The fine is understood to be one of the largest for this type of offending in New Zealand.

Prof Frew said yesterday the Tauranga case - brought under the Fisheries Act 1996 - was one of several prosecutions in which investigators had approached the iso-trace unit for assistance.

The Department of Chemistry team was asked by fishery investigators if the paint flakes could be linked to two suspected fishing vessels.

Earlier analysis by the New Zealand Institute of Environmental Science and Research was unsuccessful.

A method, developed by Dr Reid and used for the first time, had provided the statistical information which allowed the investigators to eliminate one of the suspect vessels from their inquiry, Prof Frew said.

The process was akin to "fingerprinting at a molecular or elemental level", and enabled a forensics analysis of materials which were otherwise "indistinguishable by conventional methods", Prof Frew said.

A laser was used on the millimetre-sized flakes to blast a microscopic-sized particle.

The particle was "ionised" by a plasma torch to a temperature of about 8000degC, a treatment which broke it down into a "unique pattern" of chemical trace elements, he said.

The trace element pattern corresponded with the paint on one of the suspected boats, he said.

"The analysis was mainly used to exclude possibilities ... When you put it alongside other evidence it can make a strong case."

The scientific instruments used by the team cost about $150 an hour to operate, the total cost of the forensics work about $4000, Prof Frew said.

The method has been accepted by courts as legitimate evidence in cases where the unit has identified the diesel contents in a fuel tanker stolen from a Nelson Lakes skifield last year, methamphetamine manufacturers and their suppliers, plus different cannabis strains and equipment used to carry the drug.

Associations with the CSI television show, which follows a criminal forensics team solving gruesome homicides, helped raise interest in chemistry research, Prof Frew said.

Enrolments in a new university course, majoring in forensics and analytical science, had been boosted by the high-profile TV show, he said.

"CSI does a lot of the marketing for us, so I can't be too reticent about the benefits of association.

"The science on the show is pretty good, but the speed is... well, let's just say it doesn't all happen in an hour."

- Additional reporting APNZ

 

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