On Thursday, we posted an article covering the recent charges brought against Tropicorium owner, Richard “Dick” Perrin. Perrin was slapped with a felony indictment for illegally harvesting and transporting reef fish, marine invertebrates, and even alligators out of Florida in order to be sold commercially. Well, it would appear that Dick doesn’t seem too concerned with the charges, as he explains in a brief posting he made on the Michigan Reefers.
In his post, Perrin claims that they did not overcollect, and that the rules against selling the fish commercially and collecting undersized angels weren’t exactly spelled out clearly, at least not enough for them to avoid breaking the law. He also claims that the tiny nurse sharks in his possession were actually born while in his captivity, and that they can be sold legally according to the rules. Additionally, he outright denies selling alligators of any sort.
After his had admission of guilt for not knowing the rules on angelfish or commercially selling livestock, and denial of a few key elements of the case being brought against him, Perrin claims that this “BS”, as he puts it, will just blow over as more facts and evidence comes to the surface.
Below is the text, word for word, that Dick posted to the Michigan Reefers website:
Anyone can buy a Florida collectors license for a few bucks at the local K-Mart. This allows one to collect 20 items per diver per day. No more than 5 angelfish per person per day. Of course we had that and we didn’t overcollect. Not so obvious, and not in the rules you can get was a proviso not to sell those items commercially. We messed up on that. The rule on undersize angels was brand new and not publicised after many years of being legal. Nurse sharks that give birth while in captivity can have these babies sold legally according to the rules I saw at that time and these came from that. I never collected or sold an American alligator, altho some of my people have a hobby in this direction. I expect this BS to pretty much blow over when all the facts come out. If you hang around long enough, eventually, a low-flying whale will crap on you. Dick
Special thanks to the anonymous emailer who sent us the link.
