Even as the course of sport crabbing has changed in Washington, a long-simmering dispute remains and its resolution could be up to a superior court judge.
With most of Puget Sound opening for the 2011 sport crabbing season July 1 and northern inland waters opening either Friday, July 15, or Monday, Aug. 15, as many as 240,000 personal use gatherers taking to the water are getting a bigger slice of the Dungeness crab take.
Washington's appointed, nine-member Fish and Wildlife Commission in February approved a controversial change in policy giving more of the state or non-treaty catch of Dungeness crab to sport or personal use gatherers.
However, because the overall annual harvestable surplus of these popular shellfish is always first divided equally between the state and Puget Sound treaty tribes per the federal district court's Rahfeedie Decision, there is only one stakeholder from whom the difference can be taken: Puget Sound's non-treaty commercial crabbing industry.
The culmination of more than six years of frequent debate and even a Legislature-directed 2009 performance audit by Brian Sontag's office, the commission reset the new non-treaty catch sharing plan to give precedent to sport fishers.
Under the old policy, two-thirds of the state's Puget Sound wide share was supposed to go to the small group of commercially licensed harvesters and one-third to a much larger group of sport licensees.
Now the commission's 2011 action has substantially, and as the commercial crabbing industry and several allies are contended, arbitrarily and capriciously, transferred the opportunity for a majority of the resource to sport fishers under what is alleged to be a management system with a number of crucial flaws.
Simply put, the commission established for the first time in decades assured and structured sport seasons under a set of strict regulations designed to enable the fish and wildlife department to ensure compliance with the treaty catch-sharing agreement, accurately estimate catches and protect the resource.
Openings each year will be from the first of July with fishing five days per week (Thursdays through Mondays) including what many sport advocates had lobbied most vigorously for, both weekend days.
And for the highly prized Dungeness crab, sport bag limits stayed the same at five (all males at least 6 1/4 inches wide) per fisher each day. Each of these elements is considered key to the rate at which the catch adds up.
As a consequence, in the future under these guaranteed, fix-length openings, if sport harvesters are determined to have collectively landed Dungeness crab up to the non-treaty share limit for any given management area, there would be no non-treaty season for that zone.
Practically speaking in the first year of implementation managers estimate that with between 230,000 and 240,000 licensed Puget Sound sport crabbers, the new system will result in a boost of the region-wide sport catch to about 40 percent of the total non-treaty share, said Rich Childers, WDFW's Puget Sound shellfish manager.
Given that this new system favors the mass of sport gatherers, will alter the balance of the Dungeness harvest and eventually may even eliminate the non-treaty commercial fishery in some Puget Sound locales, commercial crabbers have fought back.
CRABBING GOES TO COURT
In April, the Puget Sound Crabbers Association and six of its individual members filed suit against the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Thurston County Superior Court seeking an immediate court-ordered halt to implementation of the Fish and Wildlife Commission's new allocation policy and the new sport seasons approved by fish and wildlife commission in February.
A full text of PSCA suit can be found at savepugetsoundcrab.com/pdf/motion%20for%20preliminary%20injunction.pdf.
The 26-page petition asserts that the new management system would impose substantial hardship on a long-standing industry and is based on significantly flawed management practices and assumptions among, which are a self catch-reporting system with a very low compliance rate (many sport fishers either ignore or forget to report their catch).
In recent past years under the old system, despite managers' efforts to throttle down the recreational harvest, in a number of marine management areas, sport fishers caught more than their share.
Also the PSCA suit asserts that the sport fishery historically is plagued by a very high violation rate including disregard for fundamental regulations such as the required release of all females, a management stricture that is considered to be at the heart of proper conservation of the resource.
To press their case in the court of public opinion, the industry created a website, savepugetsoundcrab.com, and enlisted the aid of such noteworthy allies as the Deadliest Catch's Skipper Johnathan Hillstrand and boat owner Cornelia Devlin of Camano Island as well as the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission's Chairman Billy Frank, Jr and Conservation Northwest's Executive Director Mitch Friedman, whose testimonials bluntly criticize the soundness of the fish and wildlife commission's policy decision.
Many of the industry's concerns also were identified in a 2010 examination of Puget Sound Dungeness Crab Fishing management that done at the request of the Washington Legislature by State Auditor Brian Sontag.
The full text of the Washington State Auditor Brian Sontag's January 2010 Puget Sound Dungeness Crab Fishing Performance Audit Report No. 1002690 is at sao.wa.gov/auditreports/auditreportfiles/ar1002690.pdf.
The state auditor's performance audit found no discrepancy between the department's basic data and information used in public reports and policy discussions nor did the audit address issues of what the public policy should be concerning the allocation of the resource.
But the report did offer 12 action recommendations for encouraging sounder, more accurate management of state's side of both sport and commercial crabbing. The lion's share have been already implemented. It did not evaluate tribal crab fishing management.
Those findings were not lost on the proponents of a return the previous crab management regime.
This spring, Thurston County Court Judge Thomas McPhee denied the request for an immediate injunction blocking implementation of the sport crab seasons, but left intact the basic suit and the option for the commercial crab fishers to proceed to a trial sometime this fall
COUNTERING THE CRITICS
With the future of the infant, yet transcending public policy decision concerning crab fishing in the balance, a coalition in support of making this a permanent change has been organized.
The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife together with the Northwest Marine Trades Association are undertaking an aggressive campaign to get the message to sport crabbers that the fate of their new opportunity is in their hands.
Joining them are fishery and conservation organizations such as the Puget Sound Anglers, Beachwatchers, the Coastal Conservation Association and a number of county marine resources committees.
Tony Floor, Director of Fishing Affairs at NWMTA said the coalition believes that the fundamental problem with compliance with on-the-water crabbing rules is less deliberate and willful but more simply a matter of too many casual folks taking part who aren't familiar with the regulations.
And the one thing Childers and Floor stress is that if the tens of thousands of crab fishers participating this season do a better job of obeying the rules, the more such compliance weakens the argument of critics and the contentions in the industry's law suit.
The recreational or personal use fishing for crab in Puget Sound is one of the fastest growing licensed fishing activities the department now manages, according to Childers.
Before the season even opened, license sales were on a par with 2010, said Childers, and managers believe that sales could reach or exceed 240,000 before the 2011 summer season is over.
That number of participants includes many families and people who don't do very much of any other kind of fishing and so, unlike hardcore anglers who school themselves in depth on the rules and abide by them, these folks have a significant blind-spot.
"We as fishers all need to improve, but we're not looking for the guy who crabs every day," said Floor of the targets of this campaign.
Instead the effort's 'Know Before You Go' brochure, which is being mailed out to 80,000 crab license households, will outline the basic, but all-important dos and don'ts of recreational crab fishing.
Also, some 10,000 packets including plastic cards, measurement aids and a sample of a critical crab pot component, 'rotten cotton' escape panel cord will be handed out at boat ramps and meeting department employees and volunteers.
The department also has beefed up its website with videos showing the proper way to vet a catch by quick measurement and soft-shell testing and the need to handle non-qualifying returnees to the depths carefully.
COMMON CRABBING NO-NOS
These are some of the most often broken rules.
Keeping females: Dungeness crab can be prolific breeders so the management philosophy to maximize natural production has always mandated release of females. Their broad circular abdominal plates are easily distinguishable from the narrow bellied males. Managers believe often this is a problem of non-identification.
Under-sized crab: In violating this regulatory element, most often recreational crabbers fudge by improperly measuring the width of the carapace including two prominent lateral points. In fact, the legal measure is suppose to be taken across the shell just inside those tips.
Failure to report: The third of the top three most often ignored regulations among personal use gatherers of Dungeness crab is the requirement to report accurately not just catches, but effort or the lack of it. If you took out one or both seasonal catch record cards you must file a timely reply of your total crab take as well as if you did crab unsuccessfully or did not crab at all.
Soft-shelled: Keeping any crab which does not pass the underside shell press test is a somewhat akin to shooting yourself the foot. Newly molted crab ensconced in their newer and bigger exo-skeleton have yet to fully flesh it out, so there simply isn't as much of the delicious louie meat. It's always in the fisher's best interest to keep only the most well-developed crab.
Over-bagging: Perhaps the most blatant of all hunting or fishing violations is taking more than the allowed daily or possession limit. Fish and wildlife enforcement officers have zero tolerance for personal use gatherers of any game or food fish species who don't know the bag limit. From all Puget Sound ng the other waters, the Dungeness crab limit is five size-qualified males. And though much of this discussion is Dungeness-centric, for the record, regarding the other keeper crab from inland waters, six hard-shelled red rock crab of either sex with a minimum shell width of five inches may be kept each day.
Gear infractions: Several elements are encompassed in this category but the one often overlooked is the 'escape' clause in legal specs for crab pots. Crab have a propensity to eat each other, so any confining artificial space such as an unrecovered trap can become a fatal dungeon for growing Dungeness. So-called 'rotten cotton' tied escape panels on the sides of traps eliminate the long-term lethality of lost pots. Though conservation oriented reg like the time-release panel, properly branded buoys are another oft broken rule.
Fishing closed periods: Since the days of fishing seven days a week during the season are gone and a catch leavening weekly closure period are now the rule, crabbers may not deliberately or inadvertently leave their gear soaking during the two off days. 'Closed' means get the gear out of the water by sunset the last day of the opening and stormy weather is not a viable excuse.
It is illegal to pull someone else's trap or ring gear without them being on the scene and also raising any crab gear to a boat one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise is illegal
FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE
The second element of the state-NWMTA campaign is focusing on another basic tenant of the state's system, the catch self-reporting system.
As the state auditor and others have pointed out, it is the other Achilles Heel of the new management approach and is one that makes the new system extra vulnerable.
At the outset of the reporting requirement, the department heard back annually from only about 20 percent of Puget Sound Dungeness crab catch record card holders and with the imposition of a $10 non-reporting civil penalty, the response rate has risen to just 52 percent, said Childers.
To bolster the credibility of its sport catch estimation model, Childers says the department wants to raise the reporting rate to 70-80 percent on all the catch record cards issued for both the summer as well as any winter openings. That includes one for given to young crabbers under licensing age.
Childers said that two significant parts of the equation that are often substantially under-represented are the effort-with-no-catch and the no-effort-at-all folks and it is vital that members of those two groups take the time to report in so that their zeros can make extrapolations of hard data even more accurate.
Leaving numbers in those categories out can lead to significant over or under errors in final catch totals.
All sides in the sport crabbing issue agree that having catch estimates that are closest to the actual harvest number is a basic management necessity vital to judging both the impact of the fishery on stocks as well as assuring that treaty obligations are met.
Even the state's performance audit stated that one of the department's objectives should be to manage the fishery more conservatively as the accuracy of its data becomes more questionable.
What is absolutely certain is that treaty tribes with their vested interest and the non-treaty commercial fishing industry fighting for its future will be carefully scrutinizing the performance of sport fishers and strength of the fisheries data and the conclusions the department reaches in its assessments.
As the season of this new opportunity for a lot of Washington citizens created by the fish and wildlife commission unfolds, it's obvious that its future lies squarely in the hands of the throngs of sport fishers who are its beneficiaries.
Doug Huddle, the Bellingham Herald's outdoors correspondent, since 1983, has written a weekly hunting and fishing column that appears Fridays. Read and comment on his blog at blogs.bellinghamherald.com/outdoors.
A Crab Fishing Primer
If you are new to sport or personal use crab fishing and have been away from it for some time, here are the basics.
DUNGENESS DOCUMENTATION
Would-be personal use or recreational crabbers age 15 and older must have some valid (2011-12) form (short or long term) of a basic Washington saltwater or combination fishing license plus a $3 Puget Sound crab endorsement together with a free summer Puget Sound Dungeness crab catch record card.
Youth age 14 and younger must have the free summer Puget Sound Dungeness crab catch record card to document their takes as well.
For any later Dungeness opportunities crabbers must have a winter catch record card obtainable at any license dealer.
There are two sources of critical information concerning personal use crabbing.
The first, regarding permanent bag limits, gear and regional sport seasons is the 2011-2012 Fishing in Washington Sport-fishing Rules Pamphlet, specifically pages 136-137 and 139. This rule document can be obtained at any hunting and fishing license dealers or downloaded in whole or in part online.
The other is online at the fish and wildlife department's Web portal: wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfish/crab/ which has links to individual marine management areas and the day-to-day status of the fishery in each.
ON WHAT AND WHEN TO REPORT
The summer Dungeness catch card's deadline is the close of day Monday, Sept. 5.
After Labor Day weekend, crabbers fishing marine areas that are still open must have and use the winter version of the Puget Sound Dungeness crab catch record card.
There will be an on-line reporting period in mid- to late- September during which summer catches and/or effort up to Sept. 5 must be reported by all holders of PS crab catch record cards.
There is a later winter reporting period usually in early January for the tallying of late season success and effort.
IMPLEMENTS FOR CATCHING
? Pots - the so-called set and forget at any depth type of crabbing implement is probably the most popular type of Dungeness crabbing gear, though their proper and legal rigging is more complicated. A container is advisable as fully exposed bait can get chopped up quickly and stolen by a variety of adept marine creatures including smaller crabs.
? Star traps - often tended more directly, when properly operated these devices allow free ingress and egress of potential captives but slams shut at the first pull so all the tempted crustaceans get to the surface for examination. A bait container is advisable if a star trap is left to soak for longer periods, so the big crabs will hang around.
? Rings - popular among some Dungeness devotees working shallower waters, the baited, weighted concentric ring type device spreads a welcoming table for crabs that quickly turns into a direct lift to the surface. This device is best used at shallower depths for fast flux fishing, when you're on top of a herd of crabs constantly sidling up to the bait. Unless you pull rapidly the surprisingly quick Dungeness will scramble up and out.
? Snares - may not be as widely used as they were when first introduced, but for a certain style of land-bound crab fancier with a fishing pole it affords the opportunity to lure and lasso in one crab at a time. If all comes together properly, springy loops (of weed-wacker gauge monofilament) will cinch around one or more of the target animal's eight legs when it clambers across the spread to get at bait tied in the middle. The fisher is alerted to the crab's presence when it tugs at the line trying to make away with the bait tidbit. It's a little like working up to a hook set on a catfish as it knobbles off with the bait.
? Hoops - Next to hand-gathering by divers, this method brings you the closest to these delectable shellfish. Any long tool handle with a stiff wire hoop attached and some chicken wire or webbing stretched across it will work. During really hot summer periods, tennis shoes and shorts are the uniform of the day, but for prolonged strolls at low-tide in eelgrass beds insulated chest waders are advisable.
Almost anything is edible to crabs, so the list of good baits is long. Many crabbers use filleted fish carcasses or fish heads and certain types of forage fish such as herring will work. A bait's degree of spoilage also works to its advantage and any bait's capability to stream scent in the water also is a plus. Punctured full pet food cans also work as long as there is a good release of their smelly contents.
Pots left in areas of strong currents need to be sufficiently weighted to stay put, though the length of the hand pull is always a consideration. Thousands of pots are lost every year and the Northwest Straits Commission derelict gear crew removed more than 600 lost pots in May from greater Padilla Bay alone.
All pot, ring and star trap gear tending lines must be sufficiently long for the depths fished. Lines also must be weighted adequately to hang straight up and down so passing motor boats will not pull lolling or floating lines into their propellers.
Buoys must have a clear recitation of the owner/operator's name and permanent address with optional telephone number clearly written on it.
Other specifications regarding minimum mesh size, escape panel size and acceptable temporary escape panel tie cordage are found on page 139 of the Fishing in Washington Sport-fishing pamphlet.
Tridents, pews, spears and other piercing implements are banned in crabbing.
CRAB NOOKS AND CRANNIES
? Eliza Island - a boat-in site with the most popular crabbing area being the shallow shoal-line that runs northwest to Point France. Pots can be left here or during slack tides rings can be worked. Beware of strong bottom currents on the south end of Hale Passage.
? Chuckanut Bay - the main bay is a boat-in site, no longer set aside solely as a recreational fishing only area. The north end of bay can be waded at very low tides. Climbing or walking on the railroad causeway is off limits. Access is via the end of Fairhaven Avenue or Teddy Bear Cove Trail.
? Alden Bank - a boat-in site west of Sandy Point in the south end of the Strait of Georgia, Alden Bank is a rise in the bottom of these broad waters where pots can be left.
? Point Whitehorn - a mainland shore boat-in site, its complex littoral drift areas always attract Dungeness crab. Publicly accessible by carry-in boats at the foot of Gulf Road (aka Powder Plant Road) or launch at Birch Bay State Park where you'll need a Discover Pass and a Natural Investment Permit (boat launch fee) to enter the bay from the landward side.
? Boundary Bay - occasionally you can wade here but watch out for the invisible international boundary. For boaters, the shallows on the south side of the borderline are good all the way out to Point Roberts. Launch at Port of Bellingham's Blaine Marina.
? Samish Bay - you can wade here at low tides along its eelgrass lined north-shore, but direct access off Chuckanut Drive across Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad tracks is not legal except at posted crossings. Larger boats need to be cognizant of tide state close to shore to avoid grounding. Best access is Larrabee State Park's Wildcat Cove boat launch. Watch tides here. A Discover Pass and a Natural Investment Permit are required. Stay off private shellfish bed tracts.
? Padilla Bay - a boat-in site where the ebb tide line in the vicinity of Hat Island is a popular ring and star trap fishing area. Occasionally, keeper crab can be caught in the crevices of the rocky shore on Saddlebag Island, too. A small boat launch (higher tides) is available at March's Point, but avoid setting pots in the Swinomish Slough's navigation channel, another no-no.
Lummi Nation waters within treaty-defined boundaries are off-limits to non-tribal members as are exclusion zones around industrial shipping berths at Cherry Point and all designated state preserves in the San Juan Islands.
CRAB SEASONS BY MARINE AREA
All inland waters zones have their own individual sub-quotas and could be subject to closure before the announced date if there is really heavy crabbing pressure as well as greater than usual success and the sport catch cap is reached.
Unless participation jumps dramatically, the new allocation alterations and new seasons have been designed to yield sport harvests that stay within the quota bounds, even leaving some room for late season effort.
In each of these areas you must immediately document in ink your keeper Dungeness and retain the shells of all crabs in the field.
All inland water catches of Dungeness must be males, up to five each day, and the minimum size is 6 1/4 inches across the shell. Red rocks may be either sex and a total of five may be kept with shell sizes at least 5 inches wide.
A map and descriptions on page 103 of the sport rule book depicts and details the bounds of each of these main Washington inland waters areas.
? Neah Bay East of T-B line (Marine Area 4 East) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? Sekiu (Marine Area 5) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? Port Townsend (Marine Area 6) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? San Juan Islands South (Marine Sub-area 7 South) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Friday, Sept. 30.
? San Juan Islands North (Marine Sub-area 7 North) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Monday, Aug 15, until Friday, Sept. 30.
? Skagit Bay-Deception Pass (Marine Area 8.1) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? Port Susan-Everett (Marine Area 8.2) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? Admiralty Inlet (Marine Area 9) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? Seattle-Bremerton (Marine Area 10) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? Tacoma-Vashon (Marine Area 11) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? Hood Canal (Marine Area 12) - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
? South Sound (Marine Area 13 - open to all legal gear. Thursdays to Mondays from Friday, July 1, until Monday, Sept. 5.
Ocean coastal marine areas 1-4 and their associated sub-area estuaries have longer and differential openings for various types of gear. Also there is not catch recording and reporting requirement.
Managers say that if sufficient amounts of crab poundage in the sport allocation for any or all these management areas remains after the September tally, fall/winter openings will be announced in October.
CRABS GALORE
Dungeness, red rock and grooved tanner are the three legally harvestable (by sport regulation) species of crabs in Puget Sound.
But there are a host of other mostly smaller crab species that dwell at all depths of Washington's inland waters.
The list of natives and therefore welcomed crustaceans includes, but is not limited to the box or Puget Sound king, several species of shore crabs including the Oregon and purple, multiple species of hermits as well as the helmet, decorator and graceful crab families.
On the not-welcome-in-our-waters list is a potential interloper, the European green crab that has already appeared in ocean coastal waters and is on the watch-for list in Puget Sound.
The green crab's ability to impact shellfish crab communities in general is of great concern. For details about Washington's green crab monitoring and control program, log on to ecy.wa.gov/programs/sea/coast/animals/g_crab.html.
CRABBING SOURCES ONLINE
Main Department of Fish and Wildlife crabbing web portal: wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfish/crab/. Access 11 pages of information on personal use (recreational) gathering of Dungeness)
Washington State Marine Biotoxin website: ww4.doh.wa.gov/gis/mogifs/biotoxin.htm. The meat of crab usually is not affected by marine toxin-producing organisms, but filtering organs should not be eaten.
Washington State Seafood Safety website: doh.wa.gov/ehp/oehas/fish/default.htm. Crab have been tested for PCB and other toxins and currently are found to have levels below human health safety thresholds.
Washington Public Beaches List (for other shellfish gathering): wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfish/beaches/2011-2012WDFWBeachSeasonsBarChart.pdf
Fishing by the tides: protides.com/washington/. This is one of many sites with daily tide fluctuation time and extent tables. To safeguard their pots, crabbers (as well as shrimpers) also need to be aware of potential current velocities where they choose to fish.
Department of Fish and Wildlife recreational crab catch recording (how to): wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfish/crab/crc.html
Derelict Gear Reporting Program: derelictgear.org/ Spearheaded by the Northwest Straits Commission, this effort removes lost and abandoned commercial and recreational fishing gear.
Pictorial who's who of the Puget Sound greater crab family: emeralddiving.com/id_crabs.html. This commercial Web-page has excellent pictures of the host of sought-after and non-harvestable species.
Where crabber meets quarry a famed marine habitat: ecy.wa.gov/programs/sea/pugetsound/species/eelgrass.html
Looking after Puget Sound: green.kingcounty.gov/marine/
Doug Huddle, the Bellingham Herald's outdoors correspondent, since 1983, has written a weekly hunting and fishing column that appears Fridays. Read and comment on his blog at blogs.bellinghamherald.com/outdoors.
