Stephen B skipper Merle Goreham, boat owner Hilton Fisheries Ltd., and Hilton president Jim Redmond all pleaded not guilty yesterday in Halifax, Nova Scotia to four illegal fishing charges.

Goreham was arraigned on an additional charge of obstructing a fisheries officer. He pleaded not guilty to that charge as well.

Their trials are set for August 22 and 23 in Halifax before Provincial Court Judge Mr. Joseph Kennedy.

Each is charged with having no vessel registration, fishing for swordfish and tuna without a licence, having no authorisation to fish, and possessing a dead blue-finned tuna without a tag.

Armed officers from the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans boarded the Canadian longliner Stephen B about 250 miles north of Bermuda on March 30.

The boat was among seven which escaped the shutdown of the Canadian cod fishery by purchasing licences to fish within Bermuda's 200-mile limit this winter.

The Canadian Government was unhappy because tuna and swordfish the boats caught were taken from Canada's quota as a member of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna. Under a management plan agreed to with their government, Canadian fishermen were not to start catching swordfish and tuna until summer.

The arrest of the Stephen B led to the departure of three other Canadian fishing boats in Bermuda and the end of an experiment that Government estimated injected nearly $200,000 into the local economy.