Posted on 04/24/2011 5:29:33 PM PDT by csvset
Edited on 04/24/2011 6:27:11 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Virginia watermen have removed more than 28,000 "ghost" crab pots from the Chesapeake Bay watershed over the past three years as part of a federal and state effort to restore the crab population.
The Virginia Institute of Marine Science announced the results Friday, saying the program provided clear economic and environmental benefits.
(Excerpt) Read more at hamptonroads.com ...
I don’t believe that number. I want an audit.
There were actually only about 50 traps but they put them back every night.
crap trabs.
no idea why i posted that
28K traps over 3 winters. Not a bad gig to earn $6000/month + fuel and equipment for a “waterman” to locate less than 3 traps per day. Another case of our tax dollars hardly working.
Government solution? Pay somebody 300/day to do what somebody else could do for 200.
Crab haunting ping
Hmmm...this is fairly interesting. Now, I am not a waterman, but, it is my understanding that crabs prefer fresher bait. If a lost pot has been in the water too long, the original bait(fish most likely) will be gone and the crabs caught in the pot will become cannibals. Crabs are not naturally cannibals. They will start to avoid the pot if they detect(for lack of a better word) dead and dying crabs.
This sounds like a subsidy for Virginia crabbers to stop them from over-fishing, much like the subsidies for So. Maryland farmers.
If any FReepers follow the water, please set me straight.
Here in Washington State all crab pots must have a hole big enough for crabs to exit.
During crabbing season, the hole is blocked and made impassable using a cotton based twine.
The whole reasoning is that if a pot is lost, after a few months the twine disintegrates, so that even if a crab decides he wants to go in the pot, there’s an easy exit.
Red Rock!!!
Yummmmm!!!
They need to do something similar in S. Fla. with lobster traps.
I used to sail the Keys often and at that low speed it was easy to see the bottom.
I was amazed at the number of traps I saw on the bottom with a broken line to the surface.
I’ll bet thousands of lobster are lost each year to the traps.
I had no idea crab eyes really stuck up like that. I thought that was just in cartoons. I’m a Pacific Coast girl, and I swear I’ve never seen that in any Aquarium, nor at the tide pools, nor at the live seafood tank on the pier. Honestly, you never know what you will learn on FR.
Depends on the type of crab. The really prounounced “eyes on stalks” appearance tends toward those species that spend a lot of time in the tidal wash on a beach. The larger ones that spend most of their time submerged don’t look quite so comical. I recall as a kid almost stepping on a huge blue crab while wading out into the inlet at low tide, I’d say those are more menacing than comical, lol, but then again it scared the crap out of me.
I still liked watching a crab try valiantly to eat a seagull while it was still alive.
The crab yanked feathers off the gull and devoured them as fast as he could before the gull remembered that it could fly.
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