March 28, 2024
Annapolis, US 47 F

The Rockfish Named In Poaching Sting

In hindsight, maybe losing the election was a good thing.  Former Maryland Delegate James King’s popular Annapolis restaurant, The Rockfish, has been named in a federal suit regarding poached striped bass. Sentencing was just completed for an investigation that took 8 years and several agencies to unravel. Ultimately, the feds discovered a complex network responsible for poaching millions of dollars worth of striped bass from the Chesapeake Bay

The Baltimore Sun reports that the managing partner of The Rockfish, Greg Casten is the owner of a seafood wholesaler called Profish which was found guilty of knowingly buying illegal striped bass, falsifying paperwork, and illegally selling the fish to seafood markets across the country including a handful of local restaurants including The Rockfish.

A surveillance video used as evidence shows Jerry Decatur Sr., in orange bibs, and a helper unloading striped bass the size of toddlers from a low-slung boat the color of fog into a truck on May 5, 2005, when the season was closed. Officers followed the truck at 3 a.m. out of Virginia and into D.C., where it unloaded at Ocean Pro, also known as Profish.

In addition to selling the fish to markets across the country, investigators said, Profish had another outlet: a handful of restaurants in the region, including The Rockfish in Annapolis, whose managing partner is Greg Casten, president of Profish.

Two of the principles of Profish were recently sentenced to 15 and 21 months in prison but Greg Casten was not charged.

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