CLAW ENFORCEMENT UNDERCOVER OPERATION NETS FIVE ILLEGAL CHINESE CRABS.

Byline: BILL BECHER

ROSEMEAD - An undercover officer waits patiently in the parking lot of a Denny's restaurant until the suspect drives up, gets out of his car and opens the trunk. The suspect hands the undercover officer a white plastic bag.

The undercover officer looks inside the bag. He pulls out his wallet and money changes hands while a Department of Fish and Game warden videotapes the transaction. The suspect drives away.

It looks like a scene out of a movie. But drugs are not involved. What was sold, according to DFG Warden Jim Beckwith, 51, were five live Chinese mitten crabs, a delicacy in China, but an outlawed scourge in California.

The mitten crab, so-called because it has patches of hair on its claws making them look like mittens, is one of many invasive plant and animal species that worries the DFG. Non-natives such as the New Zealand mud snail or zebra mussel have no natural enemies in California, and once established can potentially cause millions of dollars in damage and upset entire ecosystems.

The Chinese mitten crab is a prohibited species under California law and may not be possessed or transported alive without a license from the DFG. Native to the coastal rivers and estuaries of Korea and China along the Yellow Sea, the mitten crab has become established in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The DFG suspects the crabs there were illegally introduced.

Beckwith was tipped to the alleged trafficking by an informant. According to the informant, the crabs were being smuggled into the U.S. in baggage carried by cabin crew of several Chinese airlines. Known in Chinese as ``Big Gate Crabs,'' they are a delicacy if they are alive when they are cooked. According to the informant, the suspect was selling the live crabs to several Chinese restaurants and had advertised them in a local Chinese-language newspaper.

Beckwith worked with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department to set up the undercover crab buy.

Later, when Beckwith and a team of three other wardens followed the suspect to the Los Angeles Airport, they observed him receiving nine bamboo cases from China via air freight. Checking with U.S. Customs agents, Beckwith learned that previous shipments allegedly made by the suspect were coded as ``fresh water crabs - not frozen'' in the importation documents. Allegedly included in some shipments were Anguilla eels, also a prohibited species under California law.

Beckwith said about 3,800 pounds of prohibited crabs and eels were imported with an estimated street value of $155,000.

The suspect, Albert Quin Wei Li, of San Gabriel, and his trading company have been charged with 18 counts of possession or importation of Chinese mitten crabs and Anguilla eels. All are misdemeanors, said Daniel Wright, a deputy district attorney in the unit of the Los Angeles District Attorney's office that prosecutes environmental crimes. Li's attorney has entered a not-guilty plea for him, Wright said.

Warden Beckwith said that on occasion, judges in California, hearing rape, murder and other violent crime cases every day, don't take fish and game crimes seriously. But introduction of exotic species in California can cost millions of dollars in damage and affect public health, and prosecutors take the cases seriously.

Kathy Hieb, an associate marine biologist with the DFG has studied Chinese mitten crabs and their impacts. She said the crabs burrow and damage levees in the California Delta and could cause them to fail. The crabs migrate in mass and can clog water-pumping stations.

The crabs are known to damage rice crops, which grow in the Delta area. The crabs are an intermediate host for a serious parasite called the oriental lung fluke, which infects mammals, including humans. Some crabs have tested high in dangerous contaminants.

Since the crabs became established in San Francisco Bay, the DFG has been getting complaints from sport anglers that the crabs are accomplished bait stealers. The potential ecological impact of the crabs is unknown. They could eat eggs of endangered steelhead trout and outcompete other local species for food.

``We won't be able to eradicate the crabs,'' Hieb said. But the DFG hopes to stop their spread by enforcement of laws prohibiting their importation and possession alive.

Li will have his day in court sometime this month.

An example of the problems caused by introducing destructive non-native species occurred in October 1997. That's when the Department of Fish and Game dumped 64,000 pounds of rotenone, a fish poison, in Davis Lake in Plumas County in Northern California in an attempt to eradicate illegally introduced northern pike.

The DFG got a lot of dead fish and claims from local governments and residents that cost $9 million to settle. And the pike are still there, threatening the trout population in the lake. If the fish escape from Davis Lake, they could wreak havoc on trout and other fish in the Feather River drainage, the Sacramento River and, ultimately, the Delta, according to DFG biologist Patrick Foy.

- Bill Becher

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) An L.A. County Sheriff's Department undercover officer, right, reaches in his wallet to buy five Chinese mitten crabs allegedly sold by the suspect, left.

(2) These Chinese mitten crabs allegedly sold to an undercover officer are illegal in California because of the environmental damage they could potentially cause.

Bill Becher/Special to the Daily News