Thought some of you might like to read this post from Ozzie Camper Trailers Facebook page. I was trying to find the original for a read, but found this instead. There is always two sides to every story........unfortunately some people speak louder! Not sure who to believe, but his story is plausible not that you should ever touch someone else's pot EVER! Happens over here with cray pots all the time too. Divers are a big problem too. Anyway have a read and make up your own mind.
Dave
Ozzie Camper Trailers
38 minutes ago
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I would like to address an accusation made of me yesterday afternoon. Posts were made on multiple public pages yesterday accusing me of checking an individual’s crab pots and has made this very personal against myself, my family and my business. I have also received a number of personal threats as a result.
This blokes crab pot did move, by his own admission, several hundred metres down the creek until it stopped right beside us. There was a deep hole under us and I would say the rope was wrapped around the pot as it rolled along and the float was slowly be submerged under a very fast incoming tide. 3m in fact. The float was about 50mm below the surface.
I thought there was no way the owner was going to be able to retrieve this so using the gaff I pulled it up. There was a phone number on the float but as I had no reception I pulled the whole pot up. As it had a number of undersized crabs in it my thought was to empty it and leave it at the boat ramp.
At this point the owner appeared and would not entertain any explanation of what we had been intending, instead hurling a stream of abuse, and photographing us and our boat. After following us back to the boat ramp, this individual took photos of my business vehicle and took much delight in informing me that he would make sure that the business would really suffer after what he intended to do. I was trying to help him!
Under normal circumstances one would expect that if the pot owner did not accept my version of the event, he would report me to the fishing authorities for possible prosecution. Instead he posted on Facebook and other sites the so called ‘facts’ as he saw them along with the photographs.
What followed was an extraordinary output of hateful comments to the effect that I should be physically harmed, our boat destroyed, and more particularly that my business be boycotted. . Hiding behind pseudo identities, the respondents were as cowardly as they were misinformed.
So here is the problem. How do innocent people defend themselves against this kind of abuse of social media? I now realize that even with the best of intentions I was unwise to handle a pot that did not belong to me. I would be quite prepared to face a rational tribunal, plead my case, and face the consequences, but this modern system of communication does not permit such fairness