I
Hunting & Fishing
Blue claw crabs
As if the cobia situation is not enough, new blue claw crab harvest and pot
regulations are coming out as well. DMF Proclamation M-11-2016 suspends several
existing blue crab harvest rules and implements new rules. Effective Monday, June
6,2016, blue crabs in possession must still be a minimum of 5 inches tip to tip.
Added rules include no harvest of immature female crabs (these are crabs with
belly aprons that are shaped like a pyramid), and no brown or black sponge crabs
may be harvested between April 1 and April 30.
I not only agree with this sponge crab rule, but would encourage making it a
rule for orange sponge crabs as well. Sponge crabs are mated female crabs that
have fertilized egg masses maturing out of their large semicircle belly aprons. A
six-inch sook (female) may have as many as eight million eggs in that egg mass and
the maturation and egg depositing time frame is less than two weeks. (See photo
accompanying this article.) The eggs first emerge with an orange color and look like
a sponge. They turn brown, and then black, as they mature to the point of being
able to be laid. The brown and black coloration comes from the eyes of the crab
embryos.
In my youth, my father and grandfather taught me to release these obviously
pregnant females as a reasonable and responsible conservation and management
action. It has always made a lot of sense to me to promote the release of one crab
with the potential of generating eight million offspring at one laying.
In addition to these rules there are new rules regarding dredging limits, culling
and separation container requirements, and the number of crab pot escape
rings going from two to three per pot with placement requirements. As you can
imagine, there are many who are pushing back against this flurry of rules. It will be
interesting to see if all the rules survive and become part of the official Blue Crab
Fishery Management Plan.
(Continued from page 14)
Brown sponge female blue crab—Photo by Richard Seale
Conservation (and safety) first
To me, recreational fishing should be fun and so many rules take away a lot of
that enjoyment, particularly for the youth. We all need to not be wasteful, release
fish we do not intend to consume, and generally keep conservation in our minds
and actions. Bending barbs down on hooks not only is a good idea for safer fishing
with kids, but it allows for much less damage being done to the fish we hook, land
and can release. Hooks with bent down barbs can be removed much more easily
from anything.
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