The Codfather

Summary

Unexplainable – "The Codfather"

Podcast: Unexplainable (Vox)
Episode: The Codfather
Date: February 25, 2026
Host: Noam Hassenfeld
Guest: Ian Coss (host of "Catching the Codfather")
Theme: The story of Carlos Rafael, "The Codfather," New Bedford’s notorious fishing mogul; scientific attempts to count fish, the resulting mistrust between regulators, scientists, and fishermen, and what it says about science and trust in America.

---

Episode Overview

This episode explores the tangled web of fishery science, industry regulation, and the notorious case of Carlos Rafael—a.k.a. "The Codfather"—who built a fishing empire in New Bedford, Massachusetts through a combination of business prowess and outright fraud. The episode investigates the massive mistrust between scientists, government regulators, and fishermen over how fish are counted and managed, and what happens when a system’s scientific credibility breaks down. The story reveals how deep-seated skepticism of scientific data can have consequences reaching far beyond the fishing industry, touching on themes of economics, culture, identity, and authority.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Who is "The Codfather"?

[01:47-02:54]

• Carlos Rafael became the dominant fishing mogul in New Bedford, MA, even as tighter regulations and dwindling stocks squeezed his competitors.

• Nicknamed "The Codfather," Rafael was a polarizing figure: admired, resented, and suspected.

  “The American dream. It’s a certain amount of sacrifice you gotta make. And they say, Locke. Locke. Bullshit. You have to go look for Locke. Luck doesn’t come to you.”
  — Carlos Rafael [02:11]

• IRS investigators grew suspicious, posing as Russian businessmen to uncover Rafael’s secrets; rather than uncovering drugs or guns, they found… fish.

  “They show up in their full getup. Rolex watches, pinky rings, Versace belt, and Louis Vuitton shoes.”
  — Ian Coss [03:43]

• The case revealed a secret set of books, documenting off-the-books fish sales.

  “I go in the bottom drawer and I got another set of books that just says cash.”
  — Carlos Rafael [04:39]

---

2. Fish Counting: The Science and the Skepticism

[06:16-16:15]

Why is Counting Fish So Hard?

• Fish move, hide, and live in immense, inaccessible environments ("Two things I know about fish: they’re in the water and they move around" — Noam Hassenfeld [07:32]).
• The federal government uses "trawl surveys"—systematic net-dragging in randomized ocean quadrants—to estimate populations.

Conflicting Perspectives: Scientists vs. Fishermen

• Marine biologist Linda Desprez pioneered survey techniques, facing both sexism and adventurous challenges (“We brought up anchors, we brought up the kitchen sink, we brought up tires.” — Linda Desprez [11:01]).

• Fisherman Tony Alvarez (and many peers) deeply mistrust survey methods, arguing outdated nets miss substantial catches, making data unreliable.

  “In my opinion, your data sucks.”
  — Carlos Rafael [11:49]

• Surveys are seen as "scripture": whatever the survey finds, that’s the law for the year, regardless of fishermen’s experience.

  “This is the boat that sets the rules. This is like the voice of God.”
  — Noam Hassenfeld [12:32]

Trawlgate and the "Perfect Storm" of Mistrust

• "Trawlgate" (2002): mismatched net lines rendered government trawls unreliable for years—a huge scandal cementing mistrust.

• Later, a new survey vessel and updated net technology led to a disconnect between old data and new, deepening suspicion.

• At the same time, fish numbers tanked (possibly due to environmental warming), compounding uncertainty.

  “A perfect storm for mistrust.”
  — Ian Coss [17:59]

---

3. The Symbolic Meaning of Cod

[21:26-23:14]

• Cod isn’t just a fish; it’s the symbolic foundation of New England’s identity and economy.

  • The “Sacred Cod” hangs in the Massachusetts State House—a five-foot wooden cod above the House chamber.

  “Counting the cod is not just counting fish. This is like counting the soul of Massachusetts. … It’s counting the symbol of our abundance and God-given fortune.”
  — Ian Coss [23:06, 23:14]

---

4. Regulations, Choke Species, and the Incentive Problem

[24:10-28:00]

• After survey data reported dramatic declines, catastrophic quota cuts followed (e.g., 77% reduction in 2013 for Gulf of Maine cod).

• Fishermen face "choke species" challenges: once you meet your cod quota (even accidentally), you’re done for the season—even if you’re targeting other fish.

• Three choices:

  1. Buy expensive extra quota;
  2. Secretly discard (and waste) over-quota fish (illegal, but common);
  3. Fraudulently relabel the catch—exactly what Carlos Rafael did.

  “This is a lose-lose for everyone. Nobody gets to eat the fish. … It is pure waste. This is the unintended consequence of this regulation at that time.”
  — Ian Coss [27:04]

  “He was like the buyer and the seller… He called it painting the fish. ... 'I can paint the fish any color I want.'”
  — Ian Coss quoting Carlos Rafael [30:18, 30:38]

---

5. Carlos Rafael’s Downfall and the Mistrust Ecosystem

[30:49-34:08]

• Rafael eventually pleaded guilty in 2017, hit with raids, permit freezes, and a prison sentence.

• Despite this, public opinion in New Bedford is mixed: many express ambivalence or even sympathy.

  “Some people I would meet… I would ask them straight out, do you think what Carlos did is wrong? And they would tell me, no, no, he was right.”
  — Ian Coss [32:31]

• Root cause: broad-based and deeply shared mistrust of rule-making and scientific data, especially when regulations threaten livelihoods.

  “Carlos could not have gotten away with it for so long if there weren’t a whole lot of other people around him who shared that mistrust.”
  — Ian Coss [33:28]

---

6. Trust in Science: Lessons and Reflections

[34:08-39:13]

• Both scientists and fishermen possess forms of expertise—one scientific, one experiential—but the two are often irreconcilable.

• Attempts at data-driven persuasion fail in the face of entrenched mistrust.

  “The scientist does not win that argument with logic and data... When that mistrust is there and it’s so deep, you’re never going to break through that. You have to get it back to a place of shared understanding and working together.”
  — Ian Coss [36:15]

  “If you have difficult science … and they don’t trust it, you do not overcome that mistrust by proving that you are right. You need to somehow incorporate their worldview and their understanding…”
  — Ian Coss [37:47]

• Final message from a regulator (2014) at a fishery meeting:

  “You can have the best science in the world, and if there isn’t an understanding of that, it just simply doesn’t matter.”
  — Regional Regulator [38:34]

  “It doesn’t matter if people don’t believe it.”
  — Ian Coss [38:58]

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Carlos Rafael on the “Codfather” nickname:

  “We gonna have to call him the Codfather. And that stupid shit stuck.”
  [03:05]

• On trawl survey skepticism:

  “In my opinion, your data sucks.”
  — Carlos Rafael [11:49] “This is the boat that sets the rules. This is like the voice of God.”
  — Noam Hassenfeld [12:32] “The net would make scripture.”
  — Carlos Rafael / Tony Alvarez paraphrased [12:35]

• On fraud and “painting the fish”:

  “The more rules they put on my ass, I’ll keep painting the son of a bitch.”
  — Carlos Rafael [30:38]

• On integrating local knowledge:

  “You need to somehow incorporate their worldview and their understanding, their curiosity, their knowledge into what you’re doing.”
  — Ian Coss [37:47]

• Final plea for trust:

  “You can have the best science in the world, and if there isn’t an understanding of that, it just simply doesn’t matter.”
  — Fishery Regulator [38:34]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:47] – Introduction of Carlos Rafael, his reputation, and the Codfather operation.
• [04:39] – Discovery of the cash ledger and fraudulent “painting” of fish labels.
• [06:16–09:13] – How fish populations are scientifically counted (trawl surveys).
• [11:49] – Fishermen’s criticism of scientific methods.
• [15:05] – "Trawlgate" scandal and its lasting impact.
• [21:26] – Symbolic/cultural significance of cod in New England.
• [24:10–27:41] – Quota cuts, choke species, waste, and fraud mechanics.
• [30:39] – Rafael's confession and evasion methods.
• [32:31] – Ambivalence and sympathy for Rafael within the local community.
• [34:08] – Reflections on trust, expertise, and the persistent distrust divide.
• [38:34] – The regulator’s call for rebuilding trust and shared understanding.

---

Episode Takeaways

• Fishery science is an extraordinarily challenging, imperfect process; mismatches in expertise, priorities, and lived experience breed deep mistrust between scientists and working communities.
• When communities lose faith in scientific systems, persuasion with more data is ineffective; rebuilding trust requires engaging other forms of knowledge, lived experience, and honest partnership.
• The Codfather scandal was not just about fraud—it was about how systemic distrust can corrode institutions, creating an environment where wide-scale deception is tolerated and sometimes even justified.
• Questions about who counts, who decides, and who benefits are universal across all scientific policymaking, far beyond the ocean.

---

Further Listening

• For a deeper dive into the full story of Carlos Rafael, check out season 3 of "The Big Dig" podcast: "Catching the Codfather."

---

Transcript

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Support for this show comes from the Working Forests Initiative. The working forest industry is committed to planting more trees than they harvest. More than 1 billion seedlings are planted in US working forests every year. From biologists to GIs, analysts, hiring managers, accountants, working forest professionals have dedicated their focus towards sustainability, using their expertise to help ensure a healthy future for America's forests. They say they don't just plan for the future, they plant it. You can learn more@working forestsinitiative.com

[Anthropic Representative]

Support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. They say that Claude is the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow. So for developers that looks like Claude code, it runs in your terminal, reads your code base, and can apparently take on things like writing tests, refactoring or. Or debugging without you handholding it through every step. Anthropic committed to not running ads in Claude. So when you are deep in something that matters to you, they say the answer you get is shaped by your question, not by an advertiser's agenda. Ready to tackle bigger problems. Get started with Claude today at Claude. AI unexplainable.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay? It's unexplainable. I'm Noam Hassenfeld. And how should we introduce you?

[Ian Coss]

Why don't you introduce me? You're my friend. You're the reason we're here. You're the one who dragged me out of whatever I was supposed to be doing today to come in and tape.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This is true. This is true.

[Ian Coss]

Least you can do.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Ian Coss, reporter, producer, host at GBH News in Boston. Is that it?

[Ian Coss]

Nailed it. And also currently the host of the new series, Catching the Codfather.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah. The Codfather. This is what you've been telling me about, like, every single time I see you recently.

[Ian Coss]

This is what I tell everybody about when they ask me, hey, so what are you working on lately? Have I mentioned the Codfather?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So, yeah. So who is the Codfather?

[Ian Coss]

So the Codfather is a very controversial and divisive figure in the fishing port of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

The American dream. It's a certain amount of sacrifice you gotta make. And they say Locke. Locke. Bullshit. You have to go look for Locke. Luck doesn't come to you.

[Ian Coss]

So his real name is Carlos Rafael. He's a fishing mogul. And about 10 years ago, the fishing industry in New Bedford was really in rough shape. The regulations around fishing were very tight. The science was saying the fish docks were in poor shape. And yet Carlos the Codfather continued to thrive. He continued to Buy more boats. He continued to make money.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

I gotta do what I gotta do. I'm gonna survive.

[Ian Coss]

So there was a lot of intrigue around what he was really up to.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

With a name like the Codfather, I mean, it's all gotta be above board, right?

[Ian Coss]

Yeah. And it didn't help that people around town called him the Codfather.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

We gonna have to call him the Codfather. And a stupid shit stuck.

[Ian Coss]

So eyebrows are raised, suspicions are aroused, and this team of IRS investigators, they pose as Russian businessmen and offer to buy the business of Carlos Seafood.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

To try and figure out what he's up to.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah, to figure out where the money's coming from.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

Hi, this is Azebio. How you doing? That's the salesman.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

How's it going? Sergey? How are you?

[Anthropic Representative]

How are you?

[Fisherman or Industry Representative]

Good to meet you.

[Ian Coss]

They show up in their full getup. Rolex watches, pinky rings. Pinky rings, Versace. Yep. I talked to the undercover agents. He told me he had a pinky ring. He told me he had a Versace belt and Louis Vuitton shoes. It's funny they remember all these details.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Incredible.

[Ian Coss]

And I also talked with the case agent who was listening outside as the other agents went into the fish plant with Carlos.

[IRS Case Agent]

He took him upstairs into his office.

[Ian Coss]

And I should just paint a portrait here for you. Quickly. The walls of Carlos's office are covered in pictures from the movie Scarface.

[IRS Case Agent]

Al Pacino from Scarface sitting in the bathtub.

[Ian Coss]

The machine gun, the cigars.

[IRS Case Agent]

The world is nodding off.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

The whole bit, he says, is that your favorite actor says, definitely.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So.

[Ian Coss]

So they start asking him all these questions like, well, you know, how do you make all this money? Where does the money come from? How is the business worth what you're saying it's worth?

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

This is the numbers doesn't justify 175 million. So stupid of me. I go in the bottom draw and I got another set of books that just says cash.

[Ian Coss]

There you go. There he is.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

This is. This is at Carlos Seafood.

[Ian Coss]

Turns out there was a whole other side of the business of Carlos Seafood that nobody knew about. That explains how Carlos was able to keep succeeding.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And was it drugs?

[Ian Coss]

Okay, so here's the twist. The federal investigators were all assuming that it was drugs, potentially arms dealing, human trafficking.

[IRS Case Agent]

Several different agencies had feelings that it was something, but none of them could figure out what it was.

[Ian Coss]

But what's inside this cash ledger is lists of fish.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

It's just fish.

[Ian Coss]

There's no drugs.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay.

[Ian Coss]

And so the IRS agent goes back to the Coast Guard and Says, I think he's up to something with the fish. And as the IRS agent told me, the Coast Guard were like, no, no, no, no, it's definitely a drug case.

[IRS Case Agent]

They were convinced that that's what it was, but they had nothing to back it up.

[Ian Coss]

It took them a while to figure this out. But what this cash ledger revealed was that the fish that Carlos was catching and selling were not the fish that the government thought he was catching and selling. And this little sleight of hand was the secret to his business.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Huh. And what was behind the sleight of hand? Why did he have to.

[Ian Coss]

Okay.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Keep a secret folder of fish?

[Ian Coss]

Well, this is where the science comes in. So this comes back to an effort to protect the oceans and conserve the

[Noam Hassenfeld]

fish because scientists are trying to prevent overfishing.

[Ian Coss]

Exactly. But Carlos had figured out a way to catch the fish that the scientists didn't think he should be catching. Because at the heart of all this is a very, very simple but also really difficult question. And this is a question that nobody can agree on, especially the scientists and the fishermen, which is just how many fish are in the sea.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So how do you actually count the fish in the ocean? Like, who does the counting?

[Ian Coss]

It's more complicated than you might think.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I mean, it seems complicated, to be honest.

[Ian Coss]

Okay, so maybe it's exactly as complicated as you might think.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay.

[Ian Coss]

The problem with counting fish is that they're in the water and they move around.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Two things that I know about fish.

[Ian Coss]

So, you know, if you wanted to count lobsters, it's much easier.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Right.

[Ian Coss]

Because they don't move as much.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Right.

[Ian Coss]

If you want to count trees, it's much easier. They don't move at all. If you want to count birds, they move, but at least they're not in the water. But fish are incredibly difficult to count. Take a codfish. It travels hundreds of miles every year, possibly to spawn. Right. So it's not like the fish are all in one place. They're moving around. They're deep in the water. You know, they're all mixed in with other fish. They're hiding in, you know, rocky areas of the bottom of the ocean. So in the 1960s, the federal government started this program of what they call trawl surveys.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay.

[Ian Coss]

Which was an effort to systematically measure how many fish are in the ocean

[Noam Hassenfeld]

and how does it.

[Ian Coss]

What they do is they divide the ocean up into quadrants, and every year, they have a computer that spits out different numbers that tells them which quadrants they will fish. They drop a net, they tow it through the water for a prescribed amount of time. They pull up everything that's in it and they count and say, okay, this is a sample of this one piece of the ocean. They do that many, many times for years and years and years to, over time, create a picture of how many fish are out there and whether those numbers of fish are going up and down.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And did you talk to anyone who did this personally?

[Ian Coss]

So I met a marine biologist named Linda Desprez, who for many years was a lead scientist on NOAA's trawl surveys. When she started out in the 1970s, by the way, there were basically no women who did this. She was like, doing sample counting, like sorting through shrimp larvae and stuff like that.

[Linda Desprez]

And one day I was asked if I wanted to go out on the boat and actually collect the samples.

[Ian Coss]

And she was all excited. And she showed up at the dock of the boat and somebody was like, I'm sorry, you can't go.

[Linda Desprez]

As I was told. What would the wives think of a girl staying on a boat overnight?

[Ian Coss]

The crew is all men.

[Linda Desprez]

Like, I'm sorry, and God bless the captain who said, we'll get you out there. So instead of leaving at 8 o' clock at night, we left at one minute past midnight. And so I was technically not on an overnight cruise. And because I had that experience of going to sea collecting samples, sorting fish just for that one day cruise, that gave me a leg up.

[Ian Coss]

And that was how she got her foot in the door. So basically, the next time she applied for a job, she could say she had that experience.

[Linda Desprez]

I didn't say it was for one day. I just had experience. I didn't lie.

[Ian Coss]

So Linda spent, by the end of her career, I think, over a thousand days out at sea doing sample collection. And they would catch all kinds of stuff because they would fish in places where fishermen wouldn't go, where nobody would go.

[Linda Desprez]

You have no idea what's down there. We brought up anchors, we brought up the kitchen sink, we brought up tires.

[Ian Coss]

Apparently there are NOAA boats that have found, like, human bodies, that have found unexploded bombs left over from World War II. Crazy animals, you know, like a barn door skate. I'd never heard of a barn door skate, but as the name suggests, it's huge. And she did this for years.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So they go out, they trawl the ocean floor with this net. They randomly select places, they model that across the ocean, and they kind of say, okay, this is about how many fish there are. Is that it? Like, why is this more of a Complicated question.

[Ian Coss]

So if you talk to fishermen about the trawl survey, you will almost universally hear the same thing, which is that it's totally wrong.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

In my opinion. Your data sucks.

[Ian Coss]

So I met this fisherman named Tony Alvarez, who for many years worked on one of these NOAA boats. Cause noaa, the government, would hire fishermen to come out and work the gear on the research boats. And knew Linda very well, and he had opinions. So Tony went out on a number of these surveys in the 1990s. And he remembers just being horrified. This is a joke. Because he realized very quickly that this is the boat that determines how many fish he and his friends are allowed to go and catch.

[Linda Desprez]

Right?

[Ian Coss]

Right. This is the boat that sets the rules.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

This is like the voice of God.

[Ian Coss]

The way he describes it is that

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

net would make scripture.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Whoa. Okay.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah. And he found the boat extremely lacking. So I mentioned this is called a trawl survey. Trawling refers to the method of towing a net behind the boat and catching fish. Right. And the key to the trawl survey is that you're really trying to measure change over time. Right. Like, are there more fish or less fish this year relative to last year? And so to. To get that clear comparison across the years, you want to keep the fishing gear really consistent so that you can say year to year. Oh, okay. We're definitely catching more fish this year. The net's the same, the boat's the same, the tow times the same. Therefore, it's the fish. But the net on this government boat was outdated by commercial fishing standards. You know, once you get to the 90s and 2000s, you couldn't even buy that style of net anymore.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Right. So the idea is, like, it's a bad net. It could be missing a lot of the cod that's out there.

[Ian Coss]

Exactly. What Tony saw was, you know, the net would go down in the water. It would come up with, you know, this small amount of fish, and he would know. Know in his bones that if it were his boat and his net dragging that same stretch of ocean, he would be catching way more fish.

[Linda Desprez]

He was always suggesting new ways of making the net better, fish better or work better.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

Anytime I questioned the integrity of the nets and blah, blah, blah, I was wrong.

[Linda Desprez]

And it's like, we can't do that, Tony.

[Ian Coss]

And yet, this is the net that is setting scripture. This is the net that's deciding how much fish his buddies can go out and catch that they'd rely on to make their living.

[Linda Desprez]

Yeah, Tony, we know. We know. But we needed to keep it the same.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Was that the only thing that made Tony skeptical of the NOAA surveys?

[Ian Coss]

Oh, no, that was just the beginning of it for Tony. The way he described it is that just the whole setup of this boat was done by people who did not really understand and work with fishing gear on a day to day basis. This is Tony's opinion, but it was really just this constant series of issues that for him, undermined his trust in the whole system.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Got it.

[Ian Coss]

So the best and most clearly documented example of what Tony's talking about was an incident from 2002 that came to be known as Trawlgate.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Trawl gate. Everything's got a gate.

[Ian Coss]

Everything's got a gate.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Yeah.

[Ian Coss]

A couple of commercial fishermen were working on the know about. They noticed that the lines that were attached to the net were not the same length. The net was going to turn sideways and maybe even collapse in on itself. It's not going to catch fish. And what they had realized is that these lines had been mismatched for about two and a half years.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Whoa.

[Ian Coss]

So this was, as you can imagine, a huge scandal in the industry because again, this is the boat that makes scripture. This is the boat that determines people's livelihoods. This was a boat that had been criticized for years and years by fishermen like Tony Alvarez.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

I wanted to make sure those nets fished as proper as they could.

[Ian Coss]

Yes, at this point, we're not talking about consistency. This is just a mistake. And so I think that one mistake became emblematic of just this larger sense of mistrust within the industry towards the science.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Did the scientists respond in any way? I mean, like, what do the scientists say to either the criticisms of Trailgate or the criticisms from Tony in terms of, like, everything's not working on the boat?

[Ian Coss]

So I talked to somebody who was running the NOAA Science center in the 2000s about this, and he recognized that Trawlgate had seeded all this intense mistrust. So the science center tried to update the gear, update the boat, and try and do like a fresh start in hopes of building more trust. Unfortunately, that backfired. They built a new boat. And the new boat, it was much more sophisticated technologically. But because, you know, they'd been doing these surveys on the old boat going back decades, the scientists who were analyzing all this data wanted to find some way of calibrating the new data to match the old data. But this whole process of changing the boat, changing the net, developing this formula, it only fed into the mistrust partly because right around when this new boat is introduced the fish numbers start to look really bad. And here's where there's like just a really unfortunate confluence of events because you had a few things happening at once. One is you had a few really bad years of fish counting data. You also had this historic warming event in the Atlantic Ocean off of New England. And at the same time you have this new boat and everyone's sort of wondering, well, is it the boat? Is it the net? Is it actually the fish? One of the scientists I talked to at the NOAA Scientist center described this period as a perfect storm for mistrust.

[Anthropic Representative]

Support for the show comes from Shipstation if you would like a good tongue twister, try saying Shipstation sure supports our show three times fast. Close your eyes. Pretend you are the CEO of a company that produces tongue twisters. All day, every day you are generating turns of the tongue. But because this is a fast growing business, you are also spending hours tracking orders and chasing customer updates. If our world of imagination is a little too close to your dull reality, it might be worth taking a shot at shipstation by bringing together order management, rate shopping, inventory and returns, warehouse tools and deep analytics into a single easy to use system. You can try shipstation free for 60 days with full access to all features. No credit card needed. Just go to shipstation.com and use code UNEXPLAINABLE for 60 days free. That's shipstation.com code UNEXPLAINABLE shipstation.com code Unexplainable. Support for the show comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. If you are the kind of person who goes down a rabbit hole and then stays there, or who keeps pulling at a question until it clicks, they say Claude was built for that kind of thinking. For developers, that looks like Claude code. It runs in your terminal, reads your code base, and can apparently take on things like writing tests, refactoring or debugging without you handholding it through every step. I texted my friend who uses Claude and told him I was making an ad about Claude and asked why I should use Claude and or Claude code. It's just really good at coding. Lol. He said what does that mean? I said with it I can build things. I wouldn't have time for myself or ability for myself in many cases. He said nice. I said Anthropic says they are committed to not running ads in Claude. So when you are deep in something that matters to you, they say the answer you get is shaped by your question, not by someone else's advertisement taking you out of the Deep work. Ready to tackle bigger problems? Try Claude for free at Claude AI Unexplainable and see why some problem solvers choose Claude as their thinking partner.

[Indeed Representative]

This episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate. C. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit@ Indeed.com podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

Extra.

[Anthropic Representative]

Extra.

[Ian Coss]

Read all about it. The fish are gone. Where'd they go?

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

I don't know.

[Ian Coss]

For your listeners who are not New Englanders like you and I, we should really stress that the codfish has a deep symbolic importance in this region. It is not just a food that you eat. It is the reason why the Massachusetts Bay Colony exists in the first place. It is the reason why Cape Cod is called Cape Cod. It is what built the economy of the state, really made it so that there were powerful merchants here that could rally for independence. You know, it is really codfish. It codfish is baked into the history of this region.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Okay.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah, I know. Have you ever been to the Massachusetts State House, by the way?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Sure. Yeah.

[Ian Coss]

Okay. Have you been to the House chamber in the Massachusetts.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

I have not.

[Ian Coss]

Okay. So if you go into the chamber where the legislators sit and they vote, you know, you have this raised like platform at the front where the speaker sits and you know, all the head honches are. If you sit at the speaker's desk and you look out across the legislature, what you see directly in front of you is a five foot long effigy of a codfish. What that is called the sacred cod.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Get out of here.

[Ian Coss]

It's known as the sacred cod. It was gifted to the legislature years and years and years ago and it has hung in the Massachusetts State House ever since. So just you should have in the back of your mind, it's not about food, it's not about money. It's about something much, much deeper.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Wow. So like counting the cod is not just counting fish. This is like counting the soul of Massachusetts.

[Ian Coss]

It's counting the symbol of our abundance and God given fortune.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So if we go back to where we left off, we're what, like early 2010s?

[Ian Coss]

Yes.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

We got this new boat, new survey, and the cod quota is suddenly, dramatically smaller. How do people react?

[Ian Coss]

It was a shock and a disappointment because, you know, there have been Trouble with the fish stocks for years. And there have been, you know, regulations that have, you know, been tightening. And a lot of people felt like we had solved the problem, we fished a little less, and now, you know, the population is going to recover and we are reaching a point of sustainability. And the science actually backed that up. For a time it looked good. And then you get this shock in 2011, 2012, 2013, where suddenly the data starts to look really bad.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Right.

[Ian Coss]

So what you see in those years is huge cuts in the amount of fish that fishermen are allowed to catch. I'll give you one example. In 2013, they cut the quota for all codfish in the entire Gulf of Maine by 77% year over year. So if you were catching £1,000 in one year, you're now catching a couple hundred pounds.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

That's crazy. And I guess I'm wondering if the scientists say, don't catch cod. I mean, the nets are big, right? You can't make a net that specifically has a hole shaped for no cod.

[Ian Coss]

Right, right. A cod shaped hole that they all swim out of.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Exactly, yeah.

[Ian Coss]

And this creates a problem that fishermen call the choke species. Because the problem is these fish, they all swim together. You pull up a net and it's a whole mix of different things. And so the problem is, if you run out of your quota for codfish, then that is your choke species, and that means you can't go fishing anymore.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So what do you do if you catch cod?

[Ian Coss]

So let's say your quota for cod is very small. You go out and on day one of your season, you've caught your entire quota for the year, which could happen, right? You put the net back in the water and you get more cod. What are you going to do?

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Now?

[Ian Coss]

At that point, you have three options. Some of them are legal and some of them are illegal. One option is you could, like, go to your neighbor at the dock and try and buy their cod quota or buy somebody else.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So then they can't fish for cod.

[Ian Coss]

Exactly.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Got it.

[Ian Coss]

But the quota itself is extremely expensive for these limited species. In fact, the quota costs more than the fish is worth. The second option, which from many fishermen I've talked to was pretty common at the time, is you discard the choke species. You just throw it overboard. Because as long as you don't bring it back to shore and sell it, then it's not going to count against your quota for the year. Right. To be clear, this is not legal. You're not supposed to discard fish.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

What's the problem? With discarding fish.

[Ian Coss]

Well, that a lot of those fish will die anyway.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Oh, so you're not just like, catch and release?

[Ian Coss]

This is not catch and release because we're talking about a net that's dragged through the water for maybe an hour. Right. Thousands of pounds of fish packed into this net, dumped on the deck of a boat, sifted through, tossed overboard. So this fish that gets tossed back in the water has been through the wringer. And a lot of what you'll see behind the boat when you discard is just white bellies floating on the surface.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So if you discard the cod, then you're actually killing the cod and you're not reporting it.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah. So this is a lose, lose for everyone. Nobody gets to eat the fish. The fish is not conserved. The fish does not go on to live a healthy life and reproduce and make more fish. Nobody makes money off of it. It is pure waste. This is the unintended consequences of this regulation at that time.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

But a lot of people were doing that.

[Ian Coss]

It was common. I talked to one fisherman who described he would hear stories about boats that would get £1,000 of excess cod on a single toe and shovel it overboard with shovels.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

That is dead fish.

[Ian Coss]

And this, again, this is the fish that we are trying to bring back, the symbol of our abundance and vitality. It's the sacred cod. It is literally the sacred fish of the region being shoveled overboard dead a thousand pounds at a time.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So option one was you pay for it, buy new quota. Option two, is this terrible? Lose, lose, lose option?

[Ian Coss]

Yep.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Is the third one good?

[Ian Coss]

Well, it depends on your point of view. And this is where we connect back to Carlos Rafael.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

The codfather.

[Ian Coss]

The codfather. He brought those fish to shore that he did not have quota for, and he very carefully sold them without anyone ever realizing what they were. He would pass them off as other species.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Got it. So, like, a species that, like, had a higher quota or something.

[Ian Coss]

Exactly.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Got it.

[Ian Coss]

So what was going on at the time, again, like 2010s, the COD quota, very low. Gray soul, very low. Flounder very low. Haddock pretty high. And so what Carlos would do is fudge the paperwork so that his cod and his flounder and his sole looked like haddock. What Carlos was able to do was misreport the fish at many different stages along the supply chain so that all along the way, the government sees, okay, haddock, haddock landed the dock. Haddock was sold to Carlos. Rafael Haddock went on the truck to New York. But then when it Actually lands on the plate at the restaurant. It's your gray soul.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

How was he able to do this?

[Ian Coss]

The key was vertical integration.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

I was a fish buyer. I didn't have to go through what the other people go through.

[Ian Coss]

So Carlos and had been around the docks in New Bedford for a long time, and he had built up this kind of unique empire where he was both the biggest boat owner in the fleet. He owned about 40 boats, and he also ran the biggest fish processing plant in the city. He was like the buyer and the seller, if that makes sense. The way Carlos described it to me

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

was it came from the ocean direct to me. Nobody else put their fingers on a cake.

[Ian Coss]

He controlled the entire chain. He called it painting the fish. He really drew out this metaphor when he was talking with the undercover IRS agents. Eventually, they got to the point where he was just talking openly about how he went about this fraud. And he would say, yeah, I can paint the fish any color I want.

[Carlos Rafael (The Codfather)]

The more rules they put on my ass, I'll keep painting the son of a bitch. Call us up.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Oh, my God. So he is clearly committing fraud here, right?

[Ian Coss]

Yes. Unambiguous.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Has he been convicted?

[Ian Coss]

So in 2016, federal agents raided Carlos seafood. They froze the permits on his boats, and ultimately, he did plead guilty to falsifying documents, as well as a number of other financial crimes.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

So where's Carlos now?

[Ian Coss]

Carlos is out of jail. And I first reached out to him a few years after he got out of prison. And at the end of that interview, I left feeling like, yeah, this guy's a very convenient narrative about himself, you know, that he's the hero, that he was doing what he had to do. But I didn't take him that seriously. But then I started going around town and interviewing some other folks who worked in politics, who worked in the fishing industry, some academics, journalists, regulators. And the thing that really started to draw my interest in this whole story was how many people I met who, if they didn't express outright sympathy for Carlos Rafael, they had at least some ambivalence about him. They would say something like, well, you know, there's two sides to Carlos. You know, yeah, he was crass, but, you know, he did a lot for this industry. And some people I would meet who, I would ask them straight out, do you think what Carlos did is wrong? And they would tell me, no, no, he was right.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

And what do you think that's about?

[Ian Coss]

To me, it's emblematic of a much deeper mistrust and antagonism towards the government and science because the science is what drives the policy, and the policy is what, you know, what affects these people's lives. New England is like a case study in how trust within that system can break down. You have this changing assessment method, right? The new boat they brought in, the new net, the new survey techniques. You have these changing regulations. There's all this change happening at once in a fishery that has been there for 400 years. And it bred this really intense distrust. And that whatever side of it you're on, whether you're a policymaker, whether you're a scientist, whether you're a fisherman, I think everyone around it can agree that the relationship is broken. And I came to the conclusion after studying this story and talking to so many people in the industry, that Carlos could not have gotten away with it for so long if there weren't a whole lot of other people around him who shared that mistrust, who also thought the science was questionable and the policy based on that science was unreasonable. And that therefore, if you paint a few fish and it allows you to keep your boats working and keep your people employed, then that is the right thing to do.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

You spoke to a lot of scientists. I mean, what is your sense of the accuracy of the science here, the accuracy of saying that there is a low cod count?

[Ian Coss]

I think there are some tremendously smart people doing science in New England about fish at a high level. I have no reason to distrust the motives and methods of the very professional, qualified scientists doing this work. But we just. There is this feeling of it kind of lurching from crisis to crisis, from lawsuit to protest. And it's really hard to actually bring together the stakeholders.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

It's difficult because the fishermen clearly have an incentive for there to be a larger quota. It's not clear that the scientists have an incentive one way or the other. And that doesn't necessarily mean that the scientists are right, but the fishermen clearly are motivated here.

[Ian Coss]

Yes, there is no doubt that the fishermen have an economic motivation to see fish out in the ocean. But fishermen have this very intense, lived experience of the ocean. Some of the people I talk to spend hundreds of days a year out at sea, more days a year out on a boat in the ocean hunting fish than they do standing on land. And that gives them a very intimate understanding of what's out there, but a very particular understanding. And a scientist with a PhD and, you know, surveys and analysis has a very different kind of understanding, a different way of knowing the world. And that is part of what we're reconciling here is different Ways of thinking about expertise and understanding and who actually knows best. And those are very difficult to reconcile.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

Is there anything that you have learned about the distrust of science in the fishing community in New Bedford that sheds light on the distrust of science in the rest of the country? Does it help you understand it any better?

[Ian Coss]

I think the thing that's really nailed home for me is the scientist does not win that argument with logic and data and saying, oh, no, no, no, but look, but we controlled for that. No, no, no, look, but, you know, we tested that. When that mistrust is there and it's so deep, you're never going to break through that. You have to get it back to a place of shared understanding and working together.

[Noam Hassenfeld]

What you're basically saying is that if you want the science to speak for itself in a place where communities have lost trust in science, you have to build that trust back before you present them with the new science, before you try to get them to change their lives in any way. You have to find a way to connect with each other again.

[Ian Coss]

Yeah, I've watched all this footage of these fishery meetings, you know, where regulators and scientists would present an argument, and then fishermen would get up and present their argument. And it just. It always seems like they're talking past each other.

[Fisherman or Industry Representative]

There's fish coming in all different sizes, talking from baby codfish to large code. Take a look at our numbers. That's all we'll ask.

[Ian Coss]

We're accountable for what we do.

[Regulator or Industry Official]

And what we do is follow your rules.

[Ian Coss]

Where is your accountability?

[Fisherman or Industry Representative]

It's bullshit because you guys are wrong. And you know you're wrong, and no one up here has the balls to admit it. You're gonna hang a bunch of people and you're all putting your heads down because you know I'm right.

[Ian Coss]

And I think what I see in that is that if you have difficult science, that you're trying to communicate science that's going to affect people's lives and they don't trust it, you do not overcome that mistrust by proving that you are right. You need to somehow incorporate their worldview and their understanding, their curiosity, their knowledge into what you're doing. This one moment I still think about from 2014, when the top regulator from the region went to one of these fishery meetings where everybody comes together, industry members, scientists, and he gets up there and he gives this plea, really, to everyone gathered there, that we have to find a way to understand each other.

[Fisherman or Industry Representative]

I do think it points out the continuing need that has existed for generations to build bridges between science and fishermen because you can have the best science in the world and if there isn't an understanding of that, it just simply doesn't matter.

[Ian Coss]

It doesn't matter if people don't believe it.

[Regulator or Industry Official]

If you want to hear how Carlos Rafael became the Codfather in the first place, how he built his empire of fish, and why he thinks he was right to break the law, check out Ian's show, the Big Dig. Season three is called Catching the Codfather, and if you are into infrastructure or gambling, seasons one and two are excellent as well. You can find them wherever you listen. This episode was produced and hosted by Noam Hassenfeld, who also wrote the music. It was edited by me, Sally Helm and Joanna Solotaroff. Mixing and sound design from Christian Ayala. Fact checking from Melissa Hirsch, Julia Longoria and Jorge Just are our editorial directors. Amy Padula and Meredith Hodnot are the fact that sockeye salmon can navigate using the earth's magnetic field and Bird Pinkerton ran off with the beak beeper searching for Flapton. It was beeping all over the place. She needed to find a place far away from the sky, far away from all the birds flying overhead. A place where a beep would mean she was close. Thanks as always to Brian Resnik for co creating the show along with Bird and Noam. If you have thoughts about this episode, we are@ unexplainableox.com Please write to us. If you want to support the show and help us keep making it, please join our membership [e-mail] members. You will get ad free podcasts and other perks and unlimited access to Vox Journalism. You can also support us by leaving a rating or a review, or by telling people in your life to listen to Unexplainable. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Music Media Podcast Network and we will be back in your feed very soon.

[Ian Coss]

How old were you when you realized you were the son of a president? I don't think anyone's ever asked me that before.

[Narrator or Voice Actor for FX Promo]

FX's love story John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette I didn't think I could love someone like this until you. Executive Producer Ryan Murphy it's not a

[Noam Hassenfeld]

question of if I want to spend

[Ian Coss]

the rest of my life with you.

[Regulator or Industry Official]

It's if I'm cut out to be

[Narrator or Voice Actor for FX Promo]

Mrs. JFK JR. FX's love story John F. Kennedy JR. And Carolyn Bessette watch now on FX, Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers.