On August 23, 2007, John Jones …, a field officer with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who was deputized by the National Marine Fisheries Service … to enforce federal fisheries laws, was on an offshore patrol with fellow officers when he encountered [and boarded for inspection] the Miss Katie [Yates’ fishing boat]….

While on board, Officer Jones noticed three red grouper that appeared to be less than 20 inches in length, the minimum size limit for red grouper at that time. As a result, Officer Jones decided to measure Yates’s fish to determine whether they were of legal size. Officer Jones separated grouper that appeared to be less than 20 inches so he could measure them. He measured the fish with their mouths closed and their tails pinched. Officer Jones gave Yates the benefit of the doubt on the fish that measured close to 20 inches but separated the fish that were clearly under the legal limit and placed those fish in wooden crates. In total, Officer Jones determined that 72 grouper clearly measured less than 20 inches.

Officer Jones then placed the wooden crates in the Miss Katie’s fish box and issued Yates a citation for the undersized fish. Officer Jones instructed Yates not to disturb the undersized fish and informed Yates that the Fisheries Service would seize the fish upon the Miss Katie’s return to port.

Contrary to Officer Jones’s directions, Yates instructed his crew to throw the undersized fish overboard. Thomas Lemons …, one of the crewmembers, testified that he complied with Yates’s directive. At Yates’s prompting, the crew then took other red grouper and placed them in the wooden crates that had held the undersized fish. After the switch was completed, Yates instructed Lemons to tell any law enforcement officers who asked that the fish in the wooden crates were the same fish that Officer Jones had determined were undersized.