Catching The Codfather | 3. Punch in the Kisser

Summary

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The Big Dig Presents: Catching The Codfather

Episode 3: "Punch in the Kisser"

GBH News | February 25, 2026
Host: Ian Coss

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Brief Overview

In this gripping episode, Ian Coss explores the roots of Carlos “The Codfather” Rafael’s rebellious streak and the broader, high-stakes conflict between New England fishermen and an increasingly interventionist government. The episode dives into the historic alliance and subsequent rift between fishermen and environmentalists, the economic collapse that led to draconian fishing regulations, and Rafael’s first big legal battle—a federal price-fixing trial. At its core, the episode asks: Is Carlos Rafael a folk hero fighting for his community or a selfish outlaw? And can the line between the two even be drawn when the whole system is at stake?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origin Story: Carlos Rafael and the Allure of the Waterfront (00:00–04:31)

• Immigration & First Job: Carlos's first job in the US was at Berkshire Hathaway’s textile mill in New Bedford—not fishing. He lies about his age to get hired, calling it a "clean lie" born out of survival instinct.
  • Carlos Rafael (02:28): “A lie will almost catch up with you sooner or later. But that was a clean lie… I was just trying to get a job and get ahead in life.”
• Getting Fired & Turning to the Docks: When the mill discovers his real age, he’s fired. He gravitates to the docks, where rules are looser and misfits thrive.
  • Carlos Rafael (04:00): “Like that was like the cowboys and Indians. Ain’t nobody look at shit like that.”
• Waterfront Culture: The waterfront attracts risk-takers and those who resist societal grip.
  • Carlos Rafael (04:24): “Rules. No regulations, no nothing. That’s why I fit right in there. Like hell.”

2. Fishermen & Environmentalists: From Allies to Adversaries (06:38–13:19)

• The Oil Drilling Threat: In the 1970s, fishermen and the nascent Conservation Law Foundation (CLF) ally to battle oil companies threatening prized fishing grounds like Georges Bank.
• Fishermen’s Wives Mobilize: Angela Sanfilippo of Gloucester organizes against drilling, leading an emotional grassroots campaign.
  • Angela Sanfilippo (08:27): “My phone never stopped ringing… like when somebody dies in a family.”
• CLF’s Legal Triumphs: CLF wins landmark suits, preserving Georges Bank from oil drilling.
  • Doug Foy (10:06): “If you’re going to pick a case for CLF to be born around, that’s the one. All the biggest players… and this little tiny organization… saying, ‘Wait a minute, what about the fish?’”
  • Sanfilippo’s famous testimony (11:29): “We are fishing people. We supposed to take care of the ocean that feeds us every day.”
• Bitterness Emerges: After their alliance, CLF’s next lawsuit targets overfishing on Georges Bank—now pitting them against their former fishing allies.
  • Angela Sanfilippo (13:19): “When they filed the lawsuit, they forgot all about us.”

3. The System Breaks Down: Overfishing, Collapse, and Government Action (13:32–20:05)

• Signs of Crisis: Scientific surveys and firsthand reports show fisheries in sudden decline.
  • Angela Sanfilippo & Linda Deprey (14:01–14:21): “We would tow the net and nothing would come up. Nothing… everything had been fished out.”
• CLF Sues the Feds: Instead of suing fishermen, CLF sues the government for failing to prevent overfishing (citing the Magnuson Act).
  • Andy Rosenberg (18:02): “We haven’t prevented overfishing.”
• Regulatory Response: Federal regulators “roll over,” agreeing with CLF, which triggers urgent, court-enforced management changes.

4. Amendment 5: Regulations Bring Upheaval and Resentment (20:51–27:56)

• Political Crossfire: John Bullard becomes the federal “point person,” working as a mediator and regulator.
  • Bullard’s reality check (23:15): “A point person means at the end of all this, all the arrow points are in your back, not the secretary’s.”
• Amendment 5: Limits fishing days and methods; upheaval in the fishing community.
  • Angela Sanfilippo (25:45): “Every time I went to a council meeting when there was a tough issue, I would come home and I would have pain in my teeth.”
• Sanfilippo’s frustration: The process gets out of control; “we’re just the tip of the iceberg” (27:20).

5. Shock to the System: Protests, Closures, Economic Collapse (32:02–35:45)

• March 1994: Regulations go into effect amid confusion and chaos; “Fishermen say the government is sinking them.”
  • Carlos Rafael (32:47): “If they don't want us to fish, just tell us to tie up. Stop playing games. Amendment 5 is a punch in the kisser for the industry.”
• Georges Bank Closures: Swift and severe; areas the community fought to save now closed to all.
  • Rodney Avila (33:29): “They announced that they were going to have to close George’s bank because there was no codfish there.”

6. CLF: Effective Blunt Instrument or Self-Serving Adversary? (35:45–36:52)

• Business of Advocacy: CLF lawyers acknowledge using “the law as a blunt instrument… like using an ax to kill a fly.”
• Carlos and Rodney’s Critique: See CLF as taking advantage of crises for their own funding and status; Avila’s anecdote about a CLF lawyer eating haddock (a depleted fish) typifies the perceived hypocrisy.

7. Carlos Rafael’s First Legal War: Price Fixing Case (37:12–42:34)

• 1994 Price Fixing Saga: Carlos accused of colluding to set fish prices—a charge he never admits to.
  • Carlos Rafael (38:19): “I was banging him from all angles that I could to put him out of his miseries.”
• Carlos’ Defense: Puts on a strategically sympathetic display in court.
  • Carlos Rafael (41:08): “Look… My English is not that good… so please be patient.”
• Not Guilty Verdict: Carlos wins, outsmarts the prosecution, celebrates with a $500 cognac.

8. Consequences, Bitterness, and the End of the Wild West (43:51–47:41)

• Industry in Crisis: Layoffs, despair, and an existential threat for multi-generational fishing families.
  • Angela Sanfilippo (44:32): “We saw the dream of our children wiped out, that they cannot keep the heritage after seven and eight generations in their family.”
• Rafael’s Resentment: Feels rules changed when it was his turn to succeed, while old elites made fortunes unregulated.
  • Carlos Rafael (46:10): “They could kill all the whales… but we cannot catch a codfish because they already made their millions. … Dream, the American dream. He didn’t want anybody else to have it but their family, that scumbag son of a bitch.”
• The Making of an Outlaw: Rafael predicts new rules will make survivors or outlaws out of fishermen.
  • Carlos Rafael (47:41): “That’s exactly what they did.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Angela Sanfilippo (11:53):
  “And Senator, you need to remember that George’s bank is sacred ground. It’s the burial place of 500 Gloucester fishermen.”
• Doug Foy (16:21):
  “The council was not able to make the hard decisions.”
• Carlos Rafael (19:19):
  “The best person to be a conservative is the fisherman. … But they never give them credit for that because the ideas, they’re just a dumb fisherman. What do they know?”
• Rodney Avila (28:05):
  “Every time I went out… it was like a sense of freedom. … I’m my own destiny.”
• Andy Rosenberg (34:04):
  “The closed areas were kind of a shock to the system. … But it was a system that needed a shock.”
• Carlos Rafael (36:52):
  “You ain’t taking a shit tonight. You’re dreaming. You think these son of a bitches are stupid? … They might look stupid, but they’re not stupid.”

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Carlos Rafael’s immigration and early years: 00:00–04:31
• Origins of CLF and legal victories together with fishermen: 06:38–13:19
• Collapse of alliance and birth of heavy regulation: 13:32–20:05
• Federal management, Amendment 5, and the New Bedford response: 20:51–27:56
• Amendment 5’s immediate impact and protest: 32:02–35:45
• Price fixing case and Rafael’s trial: 37:12–42:34
• Industry bitterness and the end of the “Wild West”: 43:51–47:41

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Episode Tone & Language

The tone is deeply personal, raw, and sometimes darkly humorous—mixing hard-nosed, firsthand testimony from old-school fishermen with the analytic, empathetic perspective of the host. The episode powerfully captures the bitterness, pride, and despair of a local tradition facing extinction, alongside the rebellious energy of Carlos Rafael: “the rogue and the regulator… on a collision course.”

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Summary Takeaway

“Punch in the Kisser” traces the painful transformation of New England’s fishing culture from a ruleless, proud profession to a tightly controlled, deeply divided industry. The episode illuminates how noble intentions—conservation and stewardship—turned friends into enemies, and how the regulatory “axes” that saved the fish also crushed generations of livelihoods. Carlos Rafael, straddling the line between outlaw and survivor, emerges as both a symbol of loss and a harbinger of the conflicts that will define the industry for decades.

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Next Episode: The collision course between rogue (Rafael) and regulator (Bullard) accelerates—diving deeper into the legal and personal battles at the heart of the Codfather legend.

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Transcript

[Ian Coss]

Support for catching the codfather comes from Rogers Fish Company, founded by Roger Berkowitz, offering an array of New England seafood and entrees shippable anywhere in the US [e-mail] and also from MIT Sloan Executive Education Fueled by cutting edge research and aided by the latest technology, professionals can choose from more than 90 in person and online courses offered throughout the year and executive MIT edu. There's a piece of the Carlos Rafael origin story that I didn't share before because it feels more relevant here. When Carlos first arrived in this country, his first job was not cutting fish. It was actually not in the fishing industry at all. It was with a company you may have heard of called Berkshire Hathaway. Berkshire is best known today as the conglomerate holding company owned by Warren Buffett, one of the biggest corporations in the world, period. What is less well known is that in a truly bizarre journey of American capitalism, Berkshire Hathaway began as a textile mill in New Bedford, Massachusetts. And right around the time that future business icon Warren Buffett was buying up the company, future fishing mogul Carlos Raphael was walking in the front door to ask for his first job. Here's how Carlos tells the story. The lady at the window had good news. We have openings for weavers and doffers. These are tough, physical, sometimes dangerous jobs in a textile mill. And so next the lady told him, you have to be 18 to apply. Carlos admitted he was only 16. He had just gotten to the US but as soon as he walked out, he realized he had screwed up. He told the truth. So he took a walk along the waterfront until lunchtime. Then he went back and peeked inside the door.

[Carlos Rafael]

The woman would recognize me if I go back and ask for a job. She would say, hey, about an hour ago, you were 16. You just turned 18 again. So I was watching. The woman went out the back door to go for lunch. I went and they asked for a job.

[Ian Coss]

This time, when the new woman at the desk asked how old he was, Carlos said, right away, 18. When do you want to start? She said, now,

[Carlos Rafael]

a lie will almost catch up with you sooner or later. But that was a clean lie. I mean, you got bad lies and you got a clean lie. I thought that was a clean lie. I was. I don't mean anybody. I was just trying to get a job and get ahead in life.

[Ian Coss]

Something no one whatsoever disputes is that Carlos is a hard worker. At Berkshire Hathaway, he learned to change out the bobbins and spindles. He learned how to fix the machines, run dozens of them at a time. He got a promotion and a pay raise. And then a year and a half into the job, just as Carlos was coming up on his 18th birthday, the manager called Carlos into the office.

[Carlos Rafael]

He says, how old are you? 19. Because I had been here for a while, since 19. He says, Are you sure? I said, yeah, I am sure. Okay. Would you mind bringing your passport tomorrow? I said, oh.

[Ian Coss]

Carlos remembers, the manager had his personnel record in his hands, showing how well Carlos had performed at all the various jobs. And for young Carlos, that record seemed like it should have been enough. He had proven himself worthy by every measure that mattered. But when the manager looked up, he said, come back when you're 18. Carlos was pissed. And he did not come back. He went down to the docks and he took a job at the fish house where no one cared how old he was.

[Carlos Rafael]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Waves like that was like the cowboys and Indians. Ain't nobody look at shit like that.

[Ian Coss]

I really don't think it's an overstatement to say that for millennia, the water and the waterfront have attracted people who don't like rules. The grip of society is just weaker there. And that is part of the draw.

[Carlos Rafael]

Rules. No regulations, no nothing. That's why I fit right in there. Like hell.

[Ian Coss]

As one person put it to me, the west has its cowboys and we have our fishermen. And just like in the west, our frontier had to be tamed, Fenced off. But not by sheriffs with guns. This frontier was tamed by environmentalists with lawyers.

[Carlos Rafael]

The party was over. These environmental groups, they have. They have avengers against people making a decent living and harvest fish.

[Ian Coss]

From GBH News, this is the Big Dig, season three, Catching the Codfather. I'm Ian Coss. I've hinted at this idea that fishermen are heavily regulated, that there is a system in place to control their lives and work, which Carlos Rafael set out to break. And that system exists for a reason. To keep the fish from disappearing. This is part three. Punch in the kisser. Hey, hope you're enjoying the show so far. And just want to make sure you know that the Big Dig has a membership program called the HOV Lane. So if you want to get early access to all our episodes as well as members only events, all while supporting the show, go to wgbh.org hovlane to sign up. Thanks so much. When fishermen in New Bedford talk about the. The environmental groups, there is really one group in particular they're often talking about. I'm curious, how did you first hear of The Conservation Law Foundation. The clf.

[Andy Rosenberg]

Oof.

[Ian Coss]

All you have to do is speak the three letters clf, and before your lips have closed on the F sound, you get the long sigh. Yeah, they're not our friends. Then the distant look.

[Carlos Rafael]

Clf.

[Ian Coss]

Like, when did you first hear that name?

[John Bullard]

And a bad dream, I guess. I don't know.

[Ian Coss]

And of course, the strong opinion. What's your opinion of the clf? They have done nothing positive. It's like a ghost that has haunted the docks of New England for decades now. A bad dream they can't forget because they're still living it. I'm going to tell the story of how all this bitterness between fishermen and environmentalists began. But the irony is that once before all the fighting started, all the lawsuits and protests, these two groups did not hate each other. In fact, they were allies.

[News Anchor]

The Georges bank fishing area is one of the richest in the world. So far, the intrusion of oil and gas companies into the area has been limited. But this spring, the department.

[Ian Coss]

This all starts back in the 1970s, after the oil embargo and the gas lines, the Carter administration was looking for new places to drill for oil. And Georgia's bank, the prized fishing grounds off New England, quickly emerged as a top candidate.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

I tell you one thing I remember when they came through the news, Angela

[Ian Coss]

Sanfilippo heard about it right away.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

It was like, this is not good. Something is going on here.

[Ian Coss]

Sanfilippo did not fish herself, but her husband did. And like most fishermen, he was out at sea weeks or months of the year. So the work of advocacy and politics was often picked up by the fishermen's wives. Sanfilippo led a group of them in

[Angela Sanfilippo]

Gloucester, Massachusetts, and people just went crazy. My phone never stopped ringing. I felt it was like when somebody dies in a family, and people were just calling to give us the condolences.

[Ian Coss]

For the fishing industry, which had just recently succeeded in kicking out the foreign fl. The oil companies were yet another invader, yet another existential threat. But Sanfilippo realized they had allies in this fight. In the 1970s, the environmental movement was exploding, and locally, there was a scrappy young legal group eager to take on cases. It was called the Conservation Law foundation, or clf.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

And we went to them and said, you need to do something about this. That's how we got to know each other.

[Ian Coss]

Conservation Law foundation charged that the United States Departments of Interior and Commerce have failed in their responsibility. In early 1978, Conservation Law foundation, supported by the fishing industry, took the government to court. Had there been Cases like that, before challenging offshore drilling, there had.

[Doug Foy]

And they'd all been lost.

[Ian Coss]

Doug Foy was the president of clf, which at that time consisted of just four people. Now they were taking on the combined power of the federal government and some of the biggest oil companies in the world. According to the Boston Globe, when CLF submitted their documents to the judge, the judge had to provide his own paperclips.

[Doug Foy]

So we were beyond scrappy, I'd say. And if you're going to pick a case for CLF to sort of be born around, that's the one. Because it's all the biggest players and this little tiny organization coming in saying,

[Carlos Rafael]

wait a minute, wait a minute, what about the fish?

[Ian Coss]

Against all odds, Doug Foy and Conservation Law foundation won that case. But it was just the beginning of a decade long fight alongside the fishermen's wives.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

I mean, the relationship with CLF was great, but we all worked like maniacs.

[Ian Coss]

The imminent date that leases for Georgia's bank. Again and again the government tried to drill. Again and again CLF went to court. Matters back in the courts today, and they kept on winning. Finally, towards the end of the 1980s, the matter made its way to Congress. Doug Foy and Angela Sanfilippo went together to testify.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

I didn't write anything down. I mean, this was also new to me.

[Ian Coss]

On either side of them were lawyers and lobbyists for the oil companies. Up in front of them were the senators, many of whom also supported the oil drilling.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

And I started by saying that we have nothing against oil companies. We understand that the responsibility to warm the people in our country, and we are grateful for that. But we have our responsibility too. We are fishing people. We supposed to take care of the ocean that feeds us every day.

[Doug Foy]

And then she pointed her finger, shook her finger at the senator and said, and Senator, you need to remember that George's bank is sacred ground. It's the burial place of 500 Gloucester fishermen. And she sat back and I leaned over and said, wow, Angela. And she leaned to me and said, that'll get him.

[Ian Coss]

On her way out of the chamber, Sanfilippo remembers an oil executive stopping her to say, if my wife would fight this hard for my job, I would be in heaven. To this day, there has been no commercial scale oil drilling on Georgia's bank. The fishermen won. But the end of the oil drilling fight also marked a turning point for CLF and the fishermen. The beginning of a new chapter.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

I don't want to talk about it.

[Ian Coss]

A lot of fishermen I've met talk about Themselves as stewards of the ocean, as caretakers, conservationists, just like Angela Sanfilippo, did. So it was a bitter shock when, just as that oil drilling issue was finally settled, New England fishermen got news that Conservation Law foundation was filing a new lawsuit also aimed at protecting George's bank from human harm. But the fishermen would not be allies in this suit.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

When they filed the lawsuit, they forgot all about us.

[News Anchor]

They don't call it the Bay State for nothing. Last year, the Massachusetts fishing industry was third in the nation. But according to state officials today, Massachusetts fisheries are sinking fast.

[Ian Coss]

Around the late 1980s, there were increasing signs that the fish stocks off New England were in trouble.

[News Anchor]

Haddock are down by 30%.

[Ian Coss]

The fishing industry had built all these new boats with the government backed loans. And now those boats were taking a toll.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

There were times when we were on

[Ian Coss]

Georgia's bank where we would tow the

[Angela Sanfilippo]

net and nothing would come up. Nothing.

[Ian Coss]

Linda deprey worked as a marine biologist with the federal government, which did its own surveys of the ocean using a special research boat. It was like a biological desert because

[Angela Sanfilippo]

everything had been fished out.

[Ian Coss]

Deprez remembers that by the late 80s, the tows were getting so bad that she would keep checking and rechecking the gear to make sure it was working right. And sure enough, the net would come up with debris, sand dollars, sea anemones, but no fish.

[Andy Rosenberg]

Tonight.

[John Bullard]

Are the world's oceans running out of

[Ian Coss]

fish by the end of the decade? The the warning signs were impossible to ignore. But even still, the response from the environmental community was relatively slow on this issue.

[John Bullard]

The environmental community didn't really realize that three quarters of the planet is wet.

[Ian Coss]

Hopefully you remember the voice of John Bullard, former mayor of New Bedford.

[John Bullard]

And CLF's the first organization that does

[Ian Coss]

realize that CLF, the Conservation Law foundation, the same folks who had stopped oil drilling on Georgia's bank, they get interested in all the alarming news about fish stocks because of course, they know the fishing industry very well. They learned it from the inside. And by 1990, CLF is no longer the scrappy upstart who couldn't provide their own paperclips. They have their own building with a staff of close to 60 people. They have real resources.

[John Bullard]

So they start participating in fishery management meetings.

[Ian Coss]

At least the council could get some kind of a report on that. Fishery management decisions were made at the time by a regional council in New England, then reviewed and enforced by federal bureaucrats in Washington by the procedure that's being followed. In case it's not obvious, regulating Fishing is not popular work in the near term. It hurts fishermen, it hurts consumers. But the benefit of a sustainable fishery takes time to realize, if it happens at all. So the politics are difficult. And given how bad fish stocks had gotten, it looked to Doug Foy like the system simply wasn't working, that the

[Doug Foy]

council was not able to make the hard decisions.

[Ian Coss]

Mr. Chairman, we've been over.

[Doug Foy]

I think we also knew that if we didn't manage the fishery, it would be gone.

[Ian Coss]

So the lawyers at CLF started thinking about a new lawsuit, something that could force the council to make those hard decisions. And Doug Foy knew that with this lawsuit, if they were successful, the burden would fall heaviest on his former allies, the fishermen. Was it hard to go against the fishing communities after everything you'd been through with the oil drilling?

[Doug Foy]

Absolutely. They were our friends, they were our allies. And we understood. I mean, I think we all understood why this was so passionately important to them. It was their life. And so, yeah, it was. It was always uncomfortable.

[Ian Coss]

And here is the twist in the lawsuit. CLF did not sue the actual fishermen because the fishermen weren't breaking the rules. The whole issue was that there weren't many rules to break. Instead, they sued the federal government because tucked inside the Magnuson act, that foundational law of fishing management, there was a line that said the federal government, in taking responsibility for these coastal waters, also had to prevent overfishing. So it was really the federal bureaucrats who had been breaking the law. In 1991, that lawsuit landed on a desk at the Department of Commerce, and the response was not what you might expect.

[Andy Rosenberg]

Looked at the lawsuit and said, you know what? You're right. We haven't prevented overfishing.

[Ian Coss]

Andy Rosenberg was one of the federal bureaucrats who oversaw fishing at the time,

[Andy Rosenberg]

because the science was very clear that these stocks are in terrible shape.

[Ian Coss]

And so what happened is the federal bureaucrats basically rolled over in the face of this lawsuit. For people like Rosenberg, he it was already clear the government needed to do more.

[Andy Rosenberg]

And so the court said, well, okay, if you agree that you haven't prevented overfishing, go away and prevent it.

[Ian Coss]

So the CLF lawsuit meant there would now be a deadline, overseen by a judge, for the regulators to develop a new plan to end overfishing. The deadline was one year. I think a lot of the animosity towards the environmental groups comes back to how this moment played out, that when CLF saw a problem with the fishing industry, they didn't bring it to the fishermen themselves. They brought it to the government.

[Carlos Rafael]

And the minute they started, they just got everything complicated because the government steps in and the fishermen stay on the outside.

[Ian Coss]

At least that's how Carlos Rafael sees it.

[Carlos Rafael]

The best person to be a conservative is the fisherman. They know they have to conserve for the future. They actually very smart and they know what it takes to survive and to make sure the future survives. But they never give them credit for that because the ideas, they're just a dumb fisherman. What do they know? I know everything. Because you got a college degree? Nah.

[Ian Coss]

It seems like the sad thing is that in theory, the interests of environmentalists and the interests of the fishing industry should be aligned. Everybody wants healthy fisheries.

[Carlos Rafael]

That is correct.

[Ian Coss]

So how did things go so wrong?

[Carlos Rafael]

Because they keep pushing instead of getting to the table and try to work things out as a good American would do. Let's sit and dialogue and see if we come to a comprehensive situation between the fishermen and the environmental groups. They don't want that because you would solve the problem. If you solve the problem, who needs them anymore? So you need to have a crisis for them to take advantage of it. It's like the politicians. They never let a crisis go without taking advantage of it for political use.

[Ian Coss]

Compared with the good days, twice the effort for half the fish. It's scary. It's really scary. It's a doomsday situation if we keep on the way we're going. In 1991, that sense of crisis was real. This is from a frontline document from that year which featured fishermen in New Bedford. So this is a crisis.

[Carlos Rafael]

Sure, it's a crisis.

[John Bullard]

It was a crisis.

[Ian Coss]

And John Bullard was about to get involved, but not as the mayor of New Bedford. So to catch you up on Bullard's story, In the late 80s, as mayor, he took on the environmentally sound but politically foolish project of building a new wastewater treatment plant for the city. Of course, some people were going to have to live next to that sewer plant, and they didn't like it.

[John Bullard]

And that made me the ex mayor of New Bedford.

[Ian Coss]

In 1991, Buller lost reelection. But out of that tough loss came an opportunity. A call from Congressman Gary Studds, who had led the charge to kick out the foreign fleets and build up the local fishing industry. Studds wanted Bullard to come to Washington to work on fishery management.

[John Bullard]

And I said, gary, are you nuts? What do I know about fishing? And he said, john, the people who know about fisheries have screwed everything up. What you have demonstrated is you know how to make difficult decisions.

[Ian Coss]

The 1990s would be a time for difficult Decisions. So Bullard packed up and moved to D.C. to take a job at the Department of Commerce, which includes the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the people in charge of fishing. In fact, it was technically Bullard's boss, the Secretary of Commerce, who CLF had just sued to end overfishing. And so early in the job, Bullard sat down with the whole New England congressional delegation, plus the secretary.

[John Bullard]

So you had George Mitchell, who was the Senate majority leader from Maine, Kennedy, Gary Studds. You know, you had very powerful people. And they were telling Secretary Brown, groundfish in New England is a national emergency, and you guys better treat it like a national emergency.

[Ian Coss]

The secretary, Ron Brown, heard out the congresspeople and then offered this response.

[John Bullard]

We will provide some funding. And the point person is John Bullard. You talk to him. And I was driving back from the Capitol, and I'm talking to Secretary Brown's chief policy guy, and I said, what exactly is a point person anyway? And he said, a point person means at the end of all this, all the arrow points are in your back, not the secretaries. Do you understand? I said, I understand perfectly.

[Ian Coss]

The U.S. commerce Department came up with $30 million to help the New England fishermen. The strategy that Bullard's boss, the Secretary of Commerce, landed on was to use federal money as leverage as an incentive.

[John Bullard]

Really, John, you are going to provide economic assistance to these people in order

[Ian Coss]

to help his colleagues push through new, tougher regulation.

[John Bullard]

Andy, you are going to be tough as nails, and you are going to get a management system in place so that we bring back the fish stocks.

[Ian Coss]

The guy whose job it was to be as tough as nails was Andy Rosenberg, the federal bureaucrat we met earlier.

[Andy Rosenberg]

My job was to, you know, try to push forward on the stuff that nobody liked.

[John Bullard]

So Andy and I had this, like, tag team going back and forth. Good cop, bad cop.

[Andy Rosenberg]

Nobody wants to be regulated. I don't want to be regulated. You don't want to be regulated. His job was to make it palatable.

[John Bullard]

I got to play the good cop that time. Yeah, that time.

[Ian Coss]

Former Mayor John Bullard says change is inevitable, and fishermen had better understand that business as usual is not sustainable. We cannot do what we. The painful medicine that Bullard and Rosenberg were pushing would be known as Amendment 5, the Fifth Amendment to the region's fishing rules. Since the passage of Magnus. This was the direct result of the CLF lawsuit. The heavy burden that would now fall on the fishermen. It limited what kinds of nets fishermen could use and most importantly, how many days a year they could fish. Fewer days at Sea meant less fish, which meant less money.

[News Anchor]

But they are upset about the upcoming restrictions of the number of days at sea.

[Ian Coss]

That got people's attention.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

Every time I went to a council meeting when there was a tough issue, I would come home and I would have pain in my teeth.

[Ian Coss]

Angela Sanfilippo, who led the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives, was at those meetings of the Regional Fishery council as Amendment 5 took shape.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

And I called the dentist for an appointment and went to see him, and he said, sanjay, nothing is wrong. Tell me what you're doing. So that's how bad was. I used to have moment, and I didn't want to talk to people for three days.

[Ian Coss]

Sanfilippo was not opposed to all regulation. She wanted the fishery protected. And I want to stress this is true of most fishermen I've talked to. They know it's a finite resource that has to be managed. So at first, Sanfilippo had actually supported the Conservation Law foundation lawsuit. She knew the CLF people and thought they could prompt some meaningful changes. For example, she supported a limit on how many days every boat could go

[Angela Sanfilippo]

out to sea at the same time. There would have been many different ways we could achieve the goals.

[Ian Coss]

But she soon realized that what CLF had set in motion was now very much beyond her control and beyond what she had envisioned. The fishermen were no longer the stewards of the fish. The advocates for the fish, they had been supplanted. Conservation Law foundation would now speak for the fish. Sanfilippo remembers a council official pulling her aside at one point, when Amendment 5 was still being debated and warning her.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

We're so sorry, but we have no choice. And I tell you, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Prepare yourselves, and it's the truth.

[Ian Coss]

In the fall of 1993, with the judge's deadline already passed, the New England Fishery council approved Amendment 5 by a slim vote. The new rules would take effect at the start of the new season, spring of 1994.

[Rodney Avila]

I fished 47 years.

[Ian Coss]

For fisherman Rodney Avila, the new rules would mean the end of a whole way of life, the only life he had ever known.

[Rodney Avila]

People say to me, how can you go fishing for that? Long ago, every time I went out, I passed through them gates of that dike. It was like a sense of freedom. I was free. It was like, nobody's watching me. I'm my own destiny. And I would have it opposite fear. When I got old, when I come through that dike again, coming in, I get another trip we made. Nobody got hurt, right? We're all set.

[Ian Coss]

So the freedom and the responsibility go hand in hand.

[Rodney Avila]

Exactly. Exactly. Not that I want to do anything bad, but it's like, you know, I don't have big Brother looking over my shoulder. I can do what I want.

[Ian Coss]

Under Amendment 5, every time Avila left the harbor, the government would be keeping track. Every time he came back, they would be keeping track. He was no longer free to go fish any day he wanted to. At that moment, did you feel like you had solved it, that this would put New England on a sustainable path to save the fishery?

[John Bullard]

I remember, you know, walking by when I started work down there. They were digging a hole next to the Commerce Building for what ended up the EPA Ronald Reagan building. And every day I looked at these guys in hard hats and I said, at the end of the day, they know what they've done and they know what they've completed, and they know it's going to last several hundred years.

[Ian Coss]

Bullard wasn't so sure. He could say the same for his own work.

[John Bullard]

Is my work gonna have a lasting impact, or am I, you know, holding back the tide?

[Ian Coss]

The winter of 1994 set low temperature records across the country for fishermen in New England. It meant ice floes in the bay, cracked hulls, snapped lines. The mood was already tense as everyone waited for the new rules to take effect. But for Carlos Raphael, Amendment 5 would be the least of his worries that year. When did you first realize that the federal government was coming after you?

[Carlos Rafael]

The first time.

[Ian Coss]

The first time.

[Carlos Rafael]

Oh, Jesus.

[Doug Foy]

Foreign.

[Ian Coss]

I'm David Remnick, host of the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's nothing like finding a story you can really sink into that lets you tune out the noise and focus on what matters. In print or here on the podcast, the New Yorker brings you thoughtfulness and depth and even humor that you can't find anywhere else. So please join me every week for the New Yorker Radio Hour. Wherever you listen to podcasts. When I go down to New Bedford to do interviews for the series, I would often stop by one of the fish markets in town on my way home just to see what was fresh, maybe get something for dinner. And it reminded me that a great fishmonger is really a special treat. And I'm not just talking about a fish seller, but somebody who can really make sure that you're only getting the best quality fish, tell you where it came from, maybe even offer you a tip on how to cook it. That is what you get from Rogers Fish Company. You can order online at rogersfishco.com or check out Their new location at Logan airport in boston.

[News Anchor]

Now, from battleship cove to new Bedford

[Ian Coss]

harbor, new News Center 13.

[Andy Rosenberg]

Good evening.

[Ian Coss]

I'm Jim phillips.

[News Anchor]

And I'm Monique stylos. Thanks for joining us. New England fishermen say new regulations combined with dwindling stocks are putting down.

[Ian Coss]

In March of 1994, Amendment 5 went into effect immediately. There was confusion about when boats had to have the new nets, where they could get them, and why so many changes were happening all at once. It had been a tough winter already, and now this.

[News Anchor]

The growing protest is tonight's top story.

[Ian Coss]

On March 1, fishermen were all over the local news.

[News Anchor]

Fishermen are taking on the government.

[Ian Coss]

Fishermen say the government is sinking them.

[News Anchor]

Fishermen say they'll be forced to swallow a big hook.

[Ian Coss]

There were shots of boats steaming from new Bedford up to Boston in a massive flotilla.

[News Anchor]

Joining the battle today was this armada of fishing vessels from new Bedford. Vessels clogged up Boston harbor.

[Ian Coss]

There were fishermen waving sailors, Fishermen predicting the end of a way of life.

[Carlos Rafael]

If they don't want us to fish,

[Ian Coss]

just tell us to tie up. Stop playing games. Amendment 5 is a punch in the

[Andy Rosenberg]

kisser for the industry.

[Ian Coss]

But just as sanfilippo had feared, Amendment 5 was just the tip of the iceberg, because even as it took effect, the government scientists started to publish new data. It showed that in just a few years, while everyone had debated how to respond to the clf lawsuit, fish populations had continued to drop. And quickly. George's bank haddock had collapsed. Yellowtail flounder had collapsed, and George's bank cod was in imminent danger of collapse.

[Rodney Avila]

They announced that they were going to have to close Georgia's bank because there was no codfish there.

[Ian Coss]

So just months after the new rules took effect, the council, still under great pressure to end overfishing, moved to close portions of George's bank entirely.

[News Anchor]

6,000 square miles of George's bank will be closed for several months, and that

[Rodney Avila]

meant no fishing for anybody again.

[Ian Coss]

Rodney Avila.

[Rodney Avila]

So everybody went haywire. All these guys, myself included, hey, we can't close this down.

[News Anchor]

Never has there been a ban this long or on this, such a large area of ocean.

[Andy Rosenberg]

The closed areas were kind of a shock to the system.

[Ian Coss]

Once again, Andy rosenberg was in the position of bad cop.

[Andy Rosenberg]

I think it surprised a lot of people. It was a big area. It was 8,000 square miles of George's bank that was closed. But it was a system that needed a shock.

[Ian Coss]

At the time, the fishermen had fought the foreign fleets to protect George's bank. They had fought the oil companies for George's Bank. They lost a huge chunk of it to Canada, and now they were losing more. During that long, eventful year of 1994, Rodney Avila decided to come ashore for good. He quit fishing so that he could get involved in fishery management to advocate for his industry. And he came to share Carlos Rafael's view that the environmental groups like CLF that were pushing so much of this change were not there to help the fishermen or the fish.

[Rodney Avila]

They had no use for any of them conservation, because they were just worried about funding for themselves. They weren't worried about anything, believe me.

[Ian Coss]

Avila remembers once one of the top lawyers from CLF came down to New Bedford to meet with industry reps, and they all went out to eat together

[Rodney Avila]

at a restaurant here in New Bedford. And she ordered a plate of haddock. And I. I said to her, I says, you are eating haddock when it's a depleted fish.

[Ian Coss]

For Avila, that said it all.

[Rodney Avila]

She says, yeah, but it's good. I said, so it's good for you, but you don't want us to bring in fish or anybody else to eat. And the haddock wasn't even US haddock. It was Canadian attic because there was no regulation on Canadian attic. It's all caught in the same place. It's all the same thing. She didn't say anything after that.

[Ian Coss]

I don't think it's fair to paint CLF as a purely cynical actor. I've talked with several people who worked there, and I believe them when they say they were trying to help. But Carlos and Rodney are right that environmental advocacy is a business like anything else. To survive, they have to show results. They have to be respected, maybe feared, even. One CLF lawyer I spoke with told me that the law is a blunt instrument. When you're up against a big adversary like the federal government or. Or an oil company, and you've got a nice big target to swing at, the law works great. When you're trying to stop something from happening, it works great. But if what you're trying to do is craft an elaborate management system that balances the needs of fish and fishing communities, then the bluntness of the instrument can do a lot of harm even as it does good. The lawyer told me it's like using an ax to kill a fly.

[Carlos Rafael]

You ain't taking a shit tonight. You're dreaming. You think these son of a bitches are stupid?

[Ian Coss]

No.

[Carlos Rafael]

They might look stupid, but they're not stupid.

[Ian Coss]

In 2015, when Carlos was being investigated by undercover IRS agents, he shared with them some stories from his past. Remember at that time, Carlos thought these agents were Russian gangsters.

[Carlos Rafael]

And.

[Ian Coss]

And he was clearly in the mood to brag about his own exploits.

[Carlos Rafael]

Oh, yeah, that was the battle of my life.

[Ian Coss]

One of those stories was about his first major run in with the law in 1994.

[Carlos Rafael]

See, this is the way the ring worked.

[Ian Coss]

I was drawing the ring.

[Doug Foy]

I like it.

[Carlos Rafael]

That was me. That was Carlos. Seafood's ready.

[Ian Coss]

According to Carlos, the trouble all started at the auction house. He had worked out some kind of arrangement with boat owners where he could bid up the fish prices on their boats. But then when the fish was delivered, he'd actually pay a little less. It might still be a decent price, but less than what he'd promised.

[Carlos Rafael]

If I made a mistake at a price or something, I'd get a break from the guys. I said, you gotta give me 10 cents off of this shit. And the thing is, I could willing deal with the boats because the boats were all Portuguese, basically.

[Ian Coss]

The arrangement allowed him to bid extremely aggressively and never get burned, while anyone who tried to outbid him would have to really pay for it. And Carlos says there was one competitor in particular who was really getting screwed again and again.

[Carlos Rafael]

I mean, I was banging him from all angles that I could to put him out of his freaking miseries.

[Ian Coss]

According to Carlos, that competitor started telling stories to federal prosecutors. In January of 1994, they charged Carlos with price fixing. The accusation was that he was actually colluding with other buyers at the auction to make sure that things went their way. To be clear, Carlos himself has never admitted to price fixing.

[Carlos Rafael]

Maybe I walked that line, but I don't think I ever went over the line.

[Ian Coss]

He was content with price hinting when

[Carlos Rafael]

the guys would say, what are you going to do on prices? Says, what I'm gonna do is this. It's not what we gonna do. No, no, no, no, no. You guys do what you want. I think I said enough, right? If you're smart enough, I said enough.

[Ian Coss]

Price fixing on this scale is a serious felony charge. Something that could put him in prison for years and cripple his business with fines. As Carlos said, the battle of his life up to that point. So Carlos found a high powered Boston lawyer, a former federal prosecutor himself, who in Carlos's words, had calluses in his asshole like a fucking gorilla. Which I think means he was tough. So why did you testify in that case?

[Carlos Rafael]

Because I was only. Are you shading me? The other two are morons. We would have gone to prison. Even so, we didn't do anything.

[Ian Coss]

Carlos was charged along with the owners of two other fish companies who he allegedly coordinated with on prices. But only Carlos would take the stand.

[Carlos Rafael]

No, no, no, no. We did a lot of rehearsal at Boston, at my attorney's office. And all the attorneys at the end, they came to the conclusion I should be the only one to testify. The lawyer says, look, he's your only hope is this guy, because he's already there in this dance four or five times. He knows how to dance with these guys.

[News Anchor]

Fish landings in New Bedford declined substantially in 1994.

[Ian Coss]

The case dragged on through all of 1994, just as the shock of the new regulations worked their way through the industry. Carlos himself had to lay off more than 100 people. At that time, Carlos already owned the biggest fish plant in town, and he was steadily growing his fleet. So the outcome of this price fixing case would be huge. It would be another shock to the whole port. Finally, in 1995, it was time for Carlos to dance.

[Carlos Rafael]

So I asked the judge if I could speak before the trial started. Just go. Go ahead, I said. Look.

[Ian Coss]

When Carlos got up on the stand, he noticed right away the jury was mostly women, maybe 7 out of 12. So he decided to put on his best sob story.

[Carlos Rafael]

My English is not that good.

[Ian Coss]

He told them that his English was not that great because he didn't go to school here, and that he might be slow to answer the questions, so please be patient. This from the man who haggled for fish at the auction for a living. But he made his appeal.

[Carlos Rafael]

And I'm in this chair, and the lady, she's right there. I mean, she's almost in my lap. The juror, you have to say to the other girl, his English is pretty good as far as I'm concerned.

[Ian Coss]

By the way, he told the same exact story to the undercover IRS agents.

[Carlos Rafael]

I think his English is pretty good, but they left the asses off. So I got him to sympathize with me. I had the Jerry right off the bat. I had him on my corner.

[Ian Coss]

The U.S. attorney's office does not usually invest in cases that it can't win. But as the prosecutors started calling up their own witnesses from the New Bedford waterfront, the testimony was not as damning as they'd hoped. Maybe it was out of fear, loyalty, or simply respect. But that day in court, the sympathetic side of Carlos Rafael was showing through. The jury found him not guilty.

[Carlos Rafael]

That was it. I pulled it through.

[Ian Coss]

Afterwards, Carlos ran into the prosecutors in the halls of the courthouse. They had hounded him for over a year at this point. And of Course, Carlos didn't have to play nice for the jury anymore.

[Carlos Rafael]

Look at me, all of you. No, I swear to you.

[Ian Coss]

Again, this is from the undercover tapes.

[Carlos Rafael]

They will say nowadays, look at me. Say what? Say all of you. You. You know, good, miserable, every single one of you. Pranks. You're a nice guy. So you with me? That's what you get. You thought I was a done deal. You with the both. You came home,

[Ian Coss]

Carlos walked out the door, went across the street and bought a $500 shot of King Louis cognac. He had beaten back the government this time, but he would not be able to savor that victory for Long. John Bullage says if fishermen think 1994 was bad, 1995 will be worse. All through the 1990s, the shocks kept coming year after year. More lawsuits, more meetings, more amendments, more protests.

[Carlos Rafael]

This vital industry that provides fish to

[Ian Coss]

the American families in this country is

[Carlos Rafael]

threatened like it hasn't been threatened for years.

[Ian Coss]

Truly, I can't possibly catalog every flare up in this conflict.

[Rodney Avila]

She's speaking for a pile of money.

[Ian Coss]

Please keep the conference and show the courtesy to the speakers. But when you hear the bitterness in the voices from Avila, from Rafael, from San Filippo, this. This is when all that bitterness really started to harden.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

Because they've been betrayed over and over and over again.

[Ian Coss]

That sense of being embattled, besieged, powerless in the face of an overwhelming adversary.

[Angela Sanfilippo]

We saw the dream of our children wiped out, that they cannot keep the heritage after seven and eight generations in their family.

[Ian Coss]

Because none of the protests and speeches and media coverage really mattered. The fishermen's struggles didn't really matter. Conservation Law foundation had legally forced this wave of action, and there wasn't much anyone could do now to stop it. The Wild west days of fishing were officially over. I've been thinking about the timing of Carlos Rafael's life in America and how he must have experienced this era after coming here with his little plastic TWA wings in search of an opportunity. He immigrated in 1968 at 15 years old. The next year, along with the rest of the world, he saw an image of the earth from space. The year after that was the first Earth Day. The passage of the Clean Air act, followed by the Clean Water Act. He came of age in this new era of material limits, of scarcity and conservation. And I just think how bitter it would be for Carlos to see the Rockefellers and the Bullards of the world who had already made their fortunes in oil and whaling, who never had to worry about environmental groups with high powered lawyers looking over Their shoulders. And now, just when it's Carlos's turn to make his fortune, the rules of the game change.

[Carlos Rafael]

They could kill all the whales, get all the oil from the whales, but we cannot catch a codfish because they already made their millions. We're not entitled to do that. Dream, the American dream. He didn't want anybody else to have it but their family, that scumbag son of a bitch.

[Ian Coss]

And if Carlos resented John Bullard, then, well, that was just the beginning. Because these two men, the rogue and the regulator, are now on a collision course that will end decades later in yet another Boston courtroom. In all that news footage from 1994, there is one clip we found of Carlos, who at that time was a rising force in the industry. He's already balding, but he looks young. No skin under his chin, no clouds in his eyes. Everything about him is sharp and hungry. But for once, Carlos does not sound cocky and defiant. The reporter asks what all these changes will mean for his business. His eyes dart off to the side for a second. Then he says, probably bankrupt.

[Carlos Rafael]

Not only for me, but the rest

[Ian Coss]

of the players at the game. But later that same year, 1994, Carlos made a slightly modified prediction that the new regulations would do one of two things to people in the fishing business. Bankrupt them or turn them into outlaws.

[Carlos Rafael]

That's exactly what they did.

[Ian Coss]

That's next time.

[Carlos Rafael]

Do they think they ever gonna stop? Not in a million years.

[Ian Coss]

Catching the Codfather is produced by Isabel Hibbard and myself, Ian Coss. It's edited by Lacey Roberts. The editorial Supervisor is Jennifer McKim, with support from Ryan Alderman, and the executive producer is Devin Maverick Robbins. If you want to hear more stories like this produce produced by the same team, just search for the Big Dig wherever you get your podcasts. You can also find videos of every episode with incredible archival footage on YouTube. Produced by Joni Tobin and Annie Gerson. Towards the beginning of the episode, you heard a few voices who I did not introduce. They are Tony Alvarez, Jim Kendall and Maggie Raymond. There are several other people who I spoke to for this episode, but you don't hear and I want to acknowledge them as well. Jennifer Atkinson, Priscilla Brooks, Dan Sossland, Anne Hayden and Philip Conkling. Special thanks this episode to the New Bedford Fishing Heritage center and to Fall River Educational Television for generously sharing their archival material. We also featured a few clips from from the excellent film A Fish Story, which you can find on YouTube. We'll put a link in our show notes. The artwork is by Bill Miller. Our closing song is Viva. Viva New Bedford by Georges Ferreira. The Big Dig is a production of GBH News and distributed by prx. Hey, I want to make sure that you know this series you're listening to right now is part of an ongoing feed telling stories from the past to help us understand our present. Our first season is all about infrastructure. The second season is about gambling, and we've got more seasons planned. So if you want to stay on top of what the team and I are doing, go ahead and follow or subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. We've got some really exciting stories coming up and I hope you'll stay with us. Thanks

[Carlos Rafael]

from prx.