Officers Curtail Harvest of Snails

To the pastor of the Good News Central Church in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, the incident with the 13,200 snails was primarily a cultural misunderstanding. To police in Pismo Beach, it was primarily a failure to tell the truth.

The whole thing started Monday, when a resident of the seaside community near San Luis Obispo called police to say that some people were scooping up marine snails from an oceanfront tide pool. Officers Chris Marshall and Brian Martin went down to have a look.

“There were about 20 people down there--men, women and children,” Marshall said Thursday. “But there weren’t a lot of snails--just a few in a bucket.”

Marshall said he asked the people, most of whom were affiliated with the church, what was going on, and they told him that, although they had harvested a lot of snails, they had put virtually all of them back in the ocean.

“Two or three hours of picking them up, only to put them back in the ocean?” Marshall said. “We found that a little hard to believe.”

Marshall said he asked if he could check the group’s vehicles, and was given permission to do so.

“One guy opened up a van, and in the back were two great big coolers,” the police officer said. “One of them was full of black turban snails. We counted 13,200 of them, but there may have been as many as 15,000.”

Marshall said he was less upset by the illegal harvesting of the snails than he was by the group’s failure to tell the truth.

“There were kids there,” the police officer said. “Do you lie to cops? I don’t think that’s setting a very good example.”

Four members of the group were cited by state game wardens for violating California regulations requiring fishing licenses, which none of the group had, and exceeding the limit of 35 snails per person.

Fines could be $3 per snail--a total of almost $40,000--although Marshall said the actual penalty probably would be a small fraction of that.

Chung Park, pastor of the church at 3500 W. 1st St., admitted that members of the group had not been as forthcoming as they should, but he largely blamed nervousness born of cultural confusion.

“In Korea, you don’t need a license to get snails, and there’s no limit,” he said. “You just go down to the ocean and catch them.”

He said that, when police arrived, “we didn’t know what to say. We got nervous. We couldn’t tell the truth.”

Park said the church group had driven to Pismo Beach to study marine life and harvest the thumbnail-sized snails, which are considered a delicacy.

“We boil them,” he said. “They taste close to clams.”

Marshall was asked whether he’d like to have a taste.

“Not knowingly,” he said.