In a sprawling warehouse five miles inland from the port of Newark, N.J., Special Agent Scott Doyle was dwarfed by the metal shipping container that had just arrived from Indonesia and was headed to Maryland. It held 14 tons of pasteurized crabmeat, packed into 28,008 one-pound cans.
To Doyle, who has been an investigator for 27 years at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization, the container held mysteries — and the potential for crimes. He's seen a lot over the years, enough to know that the crab might have been taken in violation of quotas or traded to another company with forged papers or repackaged as more expensive Maryland blue crab. It might even be a front for smuggling drugs or guns.
It's Doyle's job — and that of a shrinking band of fellow investigative agents — to sift those possibilities from the flood of crabmeat, fish and other imported and domestically harvested seafood.
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