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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019
Gudgell brothers convicted of 18 ﬁ shing violations
Descriptions
in court of
‘high-grading’
By NATALIE ST. JOHN
Chinook Observer
LONG BEACH, Wash.
— C harter boat operators
Robert and David Gud-
gell were convicted Thurs-
day of 18 alleged ﬁ shing
violations.
The brothers work for
Paciﬁ c Salmon Charters,
an Ilwaco charter company
owned by their parents .
“Natural resources like
ﬁ sheries are the lifeblood
of our community, and we
could not allow the defen-
dants to continue a prac-
tice that endangered them,”
Prosecutor Mark McClain
said in a statement.
McClain said the Gud-
gells turned down a plea offer
that would have involved “a
relatively brief jail sentence,
prohibition from ﬁ shing hal-
ibut and signiﬁ cant ﬁ nancial
responsibility,” choosing to
take their chances on a trial
instead.
Robert Gudgell, 57, was
found guilty of eight counts
of second-degree unlaw-
ful recreational ﬁ shing, a
misdemeanor . David Gud-
gell, 58, was found guilty
of nine counts of second-de-
gree unlawful recreational
ﬁ shing . He was also found
guilty of one count of waste
of ﬁ sh and wildlife, a gross
misdemeanor.
The state Department of
Fish and Wildlife opened
an investigation in spring
2017, after customers on a
halibut ﬁ shing trip claimed
they saw the boat crew catch
more than the limit, store
extra ﬁ sh in a “livewell,”
then cherry-pick the larg-
est ﬁ sh at the end of the day.
They also alleged the crew
dumped the unwanted ﬁ sh,
some of which were dead,
overboard.
A ﬁ shing party can catch
one halibut for each licensed
person on the boat. If a pas-
senger doesn’t like the ﬁ rst
ﬁ sh they catch, they can
immediately release it and
try for a bigger ﬁ sh. How-
ever, catching more than the
legal limit is strictly forbid-
den, and so is holding ﬁ sh
as “insurance” and releas-
Halibut at the Port of Ilwaco.
ing them if better ﬁ sh are
caught.
Department of Fish and
Wildlife Ofﬁ cer Todd Diel-
man interviewed and sought
written statements from doz-
ens of people who took ﬁ sh-
ing trips aboard Robert Gud-
gell’s boat, the Katie Marie,
and David Gudgell’s boat,
the West Wind, in 2017.
The charges were based on
those statements and on doc-
uments gathered during a
search of the Paciﬁ c Salmon
Charters ofﬁ ce.
At the trial, t he Gudgells
often highlighted the chal-
lenges of running a ﬁ shing
business and their compli-
cated relationships with the
animals that provide their
living.
When Robert Gudgell
was called, defense attorney
Nathan Needham produced
a large matted illustration of
a halibut, asking, “What’s
Washington state House passes bill
limiting vaccine exemptions
State Senate will
consider similar
legislation
By RACHEL LA CORTE
Associated Press
OLYMPIA, Wash. —
As health ofﬁ cials moni-
tor an outbreak concentrated
in southwest Washington,
the state House approved a
measure that would remove
parents’ ability to claim a
personal or philosophical
exemption to vaccinating
their school-age children for
measles.
The vote comes in the
midst of an outbreak that has
sickened at least 71 people
— mostly children age 10
and younger. As of Wednes-
day, Clark County Public
Health said that they were
investigating an additional
three suspected cases.
The
Democratic-led
chamber passed the bill on
a 57-40 vote late Tuesday
night and it now heads to the
Senate, which is expected to
vote in the coming days on
its own bill, which is broader.
While the House bill removes
the philosophical exemp-
tion for just the combined
measles, mumps and rubella
vaccine, the Senate measure
seeks to remove such exemp-
tions for any required school
vaccinations.
The measure is spon-
sored by a lawmaker from
that region, Republican state
Rep. Paul Harris, of Vancou-
ver, who said that the mea-
sure “will make our commu-
nities safer.”
Harris said that while
most of his caucus didn’t
agree with the bill, he
pointed to the nearly three
dozen states — including
those with Republican lead-
ership — that currently don’t
have the option of the philo-
sophical exemption.
“This is a biparti-
san issue,” he said during
debate. Joining Harris in vot-
ing for the measure were
fellow Republican Reps.
Drew Stokesbary and Mary
Dye. Two Democrats voted
against it, Reps. Steve Kirby
and Brian Blake.
Republicans
initially
introduced more than three
dozen ﬂ oor amendments,
but withdrew most of them
before the late night vote after
majority Democrats agreed to
accept a few of them, includ-
ing one that exempts a child
from the requirement if a par-
ent or legal guardian presents
a written certiﬁ cation that a
biological parent or sibling
has immune system prob-
lems or adverse reactions to
a particular vaccine.
Republican Rep. Norma
Smith, of Clinton, said that
most of the communication
she’s gotten from voters in
her district was in opposition
to the bill.
“Please recognize that this
is a complex issue and that
we need to respect the deci-
sions made by families,” she
said during ﬂ oor debate. “For
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us to take an action which
doesn’t allow them to have
a voice, I believe is wrong.”
It’s unclear which mea-
sure Washington lawmakers
will ultimately move forward
with if the Senate passes its
measure before next week’s
deadline to get policy bills
voted out of the chamber of
origin. The 105-day legisla-
tive session ends April 28.
Washington is among 17
states that allow some type of
nonmedical vaccine exemp-
tion for “personal, moral or
other beliefs,” according to
the National Conference of
State Legislatures.
In addition, medical and
religious exemptions exist
for attendance at the state’s
public or private schools or
licensed day care centers.
Unless an exemption
is claimed, children are
required to be vaccinated
against or show proof of
acquired immunity for nearly
a dozen diseases — includ-
ing polio, whooping cough
and mumps — before they
can attend school or child
care centers.
Four percent of Washing-
ton secondary school stu-
dents have nonmedical vac-
cine exemptions, the state
Department of Health said.
Of those, 3.7 percent of the
exemptions are personal, and
the rest are religious.
In Clark County — an area
just north of Portland, where
all but one of the Washington
cases are concentrated and
where two suspected cases
are being investigated —
6.7 percent of kindergartners
had a nonmedical exemption
for the 2017-18 school year,
health ofﬁ cials said.
that ﬁ sh mean to you?”
“My future in hali-
but ﬁ shing. It’s an income
source for me. It’s getting
to be less and less,” Robert
Gudgell said. “You have to
be able to ﬁ sh for all the ﬁ sh-
eries, all the time.”
Robert Gudgell said he
came up with the novel idea
of putting the livewell — a
gel-coated ﬁ berglass holding
tank — on his boat because
there were times when deck-
hands couldn’t immediately
deal with ﬁ sh that came on
board, for example, in very
rough waters or when more
than one customer brought
in a ﬁ sh at the same time.
He said he believed it
kept the animals healthier
and happier, and was safer
for passengers than leaving
ﬁ sh lying on the deck. Gud-
gell strongly denied throw-
ing dead ﬁ sh overboard.
“I’m a conservation-
ist,” Robert Gudgell said. “I
don’t kill stuff just to kill. I
don’t do it.” Robert Gudgell
said his personal deﬁ nition
of “ high-grading” merely
meant making sure custom-
ers get the largest ﬁ sh, and
crewmembers take home the
smaller ﬁ sh. He said it was
common practice on charter
boats.
David Gudgell described
his frustrations with the
state’s management of the
halibut ﬁ shery, saying the
rules for commercial ﬁ shing
of halibut are so rigid that
they sometimes cause ﬁ sh to
die unnecessarily.
“It’s one (ﬁ shery) that
I don’t think the state of
Washington
necessarily
cares much about,” David
Gudgell said. He also talked
about the pressure to please
his customers, who paid
around $215 per person for
the privilege of catching one
halibut.
“Customers need to go
home with the biggest ﬁ sh,”
David Gudgell said.
He said he couldn’t see
what his deckhands were
doing while he was at the
wheel, but he denied doing
anything illegal — or tell-
ing his deckhands to do any-
thing illegal — to keep his
customers happy.
“The buck stops here,”
David Gudgell said.
A sentencing hearing is
scheduled for Wednesday .
Ex-ﬁ rst lady agrees to settle
ethics charges for $44,000
Associated Press
PORTLAND — For-
mer Oregon ﬁ rst lady Cyl-
via Hayes has agreed to
pay $44,000 for ethics vio-
lations arising from her use
of public ofﬁ ce for per-
sonal proﬁ t.
The Oregonian reported
the settlement, signed Jan.
18 by Hayes and made pub-
lic Tuesday by the Oregon
Government Ethics Com-
mission, states Hayes will
not contest that she broke
ethics laws 22 times. But
it allows Hayes to maintain
that she didn’t knowingly
break the law.
Private groups paid
Hayes more than $200,000
to lobby for eco-friendly
policies, work investi-
gators later concluded
she obtained because of
her access to Gov. John
Kitzhaber and his aides in
violation of state law.
The resulting inﬂ u-
ence
peddling
scan-
dal enveloped Kitzhaber
and Hayes, who was his
ﬁ ancé, and ultimately led
to Kitzhaber’s resignation
in 2015 and Hayes’ ﬁ nan-
cial ruin.
The Ethics Commission
will vote today on whether
to accept the settlement.
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