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| September 1981 Tar Heel Coast report that was published by the NC Division of Marine Fisheries. |
NEAR INDIAN ISLAND IN PAMLICO RIVER...For 20 cents, a crab fisherman can become a conservationist.
He can buy 2 1/4" plastic rings and place one or two in the chicken wire mesh of his crab traps (pots), adding a hole large enough to allow smaller than legal size to escape.
What a delight that must be for small crabs. A big blue crab is probably the meanest, nastiest, toughest thing pound-for-pound in the water or on the land.
Commercial fisherman Benny Leary, Lowland, said trapped crabs normally search for an escape hole. With big crabs in the pot the search could become frantic, however. He said it is like if a person was put into a cage with a bear, he would be trying as hard as he could to get out of there as fast as he could.
Benny has 300 pots overboard. He fishes them daily from April through October except for days the market will not take crabs. Legal size of blue crabs is a minimum of five inches from spike to spike. He has to sort through his catch and toss out (cull) the small ones. With two escape rings per pot, 90% of the catch is legal size (allowable percentage of undersized), he said.
Even a casual observer can see difference between between pots with or without escape rings. Escape rings pots just do not have smaller crabs. The chicken-wire holes of course allow tiny crabs to escape.
Benny said it would be foolish for him not to use the rings because they work for him, saving him time and trouble. It is almost impossible for him to sort through while he works 300 pots. A crab pot fisherman maneuvers his boat alongside a small buoy, idles down and puts his boat in a circle pattern, grabs the float and line and pulls in the trap, shakes the crabs into a plastic barrel, shoves in fresh bait, tosses the pot back overboard, and goes on 50-100 feet to the next trap and repeats. If he culled after each pot, he would never get down the line. There is not enough time and it would throw his rhythm off. His best day this year was 1800 pounds. But he has had 100-150 pound days too.
This is the first year he has used escape rings. A local Marine Fisheries law officer said crabbers who use them swear by them. He predicted most fishermen will be using them next year.
Benny said even though the rings are cheap, easy to install, save time and effort for the crabber, and are conservation, a law is needed. Some people are hard-headed enough that they need a law to do it, he said.
Marine Fisheries biologists began promoting the use of escape rings two years ago. The concept has been around in other states for some time. With 100,000-150,000 crab pots in North Carolina waters, the circles of plastic could make quite a difference.
