Serial abalone poacher Steven John Brear sent to jail for at least 12 months

A SERIAL abalone poacher has been jailed for two years and fined $180,000 for three raids on Tasmanian fisheries.

A SERIAL abalone poacher has been jailed for two years and fined $180,000 for three raids on Tasmanian fisheries.

Steven John Brear, 45, from the Sydney suburb of Lansvale, pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court in Hobart today to one count of trafficking in fish and two counts of the unlawful possession of fish.

Justice Shan Tennent said Brear had a long history of periods in custody in interstate prisons for similar behaviour

In June 2013, Brear flew to Tasmania and hired a car which was later intercepted by police.

Inside they found 245 shucked greenlip abalone and 11 blacklip abalone.

In August 2014, while Brear was on bail, he was pulled over in a white Toyota sedan in Binalong Bay on Tasmania’s East Coast.

Police spotted a backpack and garbage bags and asked what was inside although Brear would not say.

They found 168 blacklip abalone and he was again charged and bailed.

In January this year, Brear and another man were found by police near Marrawah on the North-West Coast.

They were intercepted after a surveillance operation and 862 blacklip abalone were found in one of their vehicles.

Justice Tennent said Brear had convictions for similar offences in Tasmania, Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales from 1998 onwards.

She noted that in October 2007 he was caught with 546 abalone while driving off the Spirit of Tasmania ferry and jailed for 17 months.

The judge said despite the tragic cancer deaths of Brear’s fiancee and father and the post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered after being bashed during the Cronulla riots, a serious jail term was warranted.

“There must be a deterrent sentence given the scale of your offending over the period of the two indictments with which I am dealing,” she said.

She jailed Brear for two years, with a non-parole period of one year.

She ordered he pay a special penalty totalling $180,040.