Personal use gathering of crab comes to a halt at sundown Monday, Sept. 5, in virtually all Washington's inland waters areas while state fish and wildlife department managers await information to reconcile the recreational landing numbers to see if enough of the 2011 catch quota remains to allow the opening of any fall-winter opportunities.
The only exception to this immediate hiatus applies on the waters of the two northernmost inside crab management zones, marine areas 7 South and 7 North, which will stay open Thursdays to Mondays each week until Friday, Sept. 30.
Beginning Tuesday, Sept. 6 (actually, it's Thursday when the weekly reopening happens), crabbers who continue to ply those open waters must switch to inking their take on winter catch record cards.
This document is now available at hunting and fishing license dealers.
And last but by no means least, also starting Tuesday, Sept. 6, is the period for effort and harvest reporting that is required for every Puget Sound Dungeness crab endorsement holder who took out a summer catch record card.
This report is a mandatory for all early CRC holders even if they didn't fish for crab at all this summer or did fish but didn't catch any Dungeness.
In this first season of Washington's new crab allocation regime, looming over all these relatively banal affairs is the threat of legal action brought by the non-treaty commercial crabbing industry challenging the state's fledgling policy dedicating Puget Sound's resource to the burgeoning personal use fishery.
While not granting an immediate injunction to block this summer's sport season, the state court did leave open the possibility that the plaintiff commercial fishers could bring their suit to trial later this fall.
TO REPORT OR NOT TO REPORT
Given the importance of demonstrating that an orderly public recreational fishery that both conserves the resource and complies with federally mandated catch-sharing with treaty tribes can take place, the self-reporting driven catch estimation process is critical.
The commercial industry's law suit explicitly identifies past difficulties the fish and wildlife department has had in getting the personal use crabbers to comply with the rules and it may not take much further recalcitrance on the part of sport fishers to convince a judge that the resource cannot be properly managed especially if the harvest cannot be accurately tallied.
Even with a carrot/stick approach instituted in previous years to encourage reporting, agency officials say the body of recreational crabbers achieved just over a 50 percent compliance rate in personally accounting for their catches in 2010.
The department has done away with the carrot, a drawing from the pool of reporting crabbers to award a next-years license, but kept the $10 civil penalty.
As long as the gap remains between the number who must and the number who actually report their crab catches, managers will have no option but to make significant extrapolations of catch figures to estimate total takes from the various marine management areas. Each marine area is governed by a discrete harvest allocation/quota.
This fuzziness in the catch assessment picture could make it more difficult to justify additional late openings (the so-called winter seasons) and certainly bolsters the argument that the new focus on personal use gathering is misplaced and inappropriate.
The overriding thing to remember is that if you bought a Puget Sound crab endorsement and took out a summer catch record card, you're obliged to report.
The only reasons you do not have to report on a crab catch record card is if you did not buy a PS endorsement (no brainer) or you officially declined your summer catch record card at the time you bought a license and the endorsement.
State shellfish managers will announce in early October which marine areas have sufficient amounts of their non-treaty catch quota left to allow them to be reopened for a winter recreational crabbing stint.
HERE'S HOW TO TELL ALL
When the time comes, there are two ways to make this mandatory report between Tuesday, Sept. 6, and Saturday, Oct. 1.
The first option is to physically send the hard summer card copy directly to department's Olympia headquarters. If you do not plan to crab over the Labor Day weekend, you can post your summer card now.
The mailing address is: Catch Record Card (CRC) Unit, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, 600 Capitol Way North, Olympia, WA 98501-1091.
Option two for most people is more convenient and requires simply going online through a secure Internet portal to the department's crab catch reporting Webpage and answering a few quick questions.
That portal will be up and operating Tuesday, Sept. 6, and will remain open until midnight Saturday, Oct. 1. Log on at fishhunt.dfw.wa.gov/wdfw/puget_sound_crab_catch.html.
Besides the serial number atop your summer CRC document, the numbers of Dungeness crab you caught, the dates and the marine areas from which they came, you'll need to give your birth date to file.
Anyone not filing in time will go onto the state's equivalent of a long-remembered DUNS list and will have to pay an extra $10 for their next Puget Sound crab endorsement.
WINTER ARRIVES IN SEPTEMBER
For crabbers plying the marine areas that stay open after Tuesday, Sept. 6, it is important to understand that when you make your coming winter catch card report only Dungeness crab caught between Sept. 6-30 be included.
Reporting for crab catches recorded on the winter card occurs in early January.
Make sure you have that winter card with you any time you go crabbing, too.
The first of either the summer or winter cards is free of charge, but replacement cards cost $12.
CRABBING REMINDERS
To fish for Dungeness and red rock crab in Washington's inland waters either a valid combination, saltwater fishing or shellfish/seaweed license together with the aforementioned Puget Sound Dungeness crab endorsement are required.
Also available are discounted short-term license versions paired with similarly price-reduced PS endorsements.
These other general terms cover the personal use gathering of crab:
- Daily limits are five male only Dungeness crabs with carapaces (shells) wider than 6 1/4 inches (inside the points) and six red rocks of either sex with shells wider than five inches.
- An array of implements may be used to go after crab from set-and-forget pots or traps to 'tended' star traps, rings, snares and even hoop nets or hand gathering. However, any tool that punctures or pierces crab shells is explicitly banned.
All personal-use pots, rings or star traps, their pulling lines and marker buoys also must conform to the detailed configuration and identify specifications found on page 139 of the Fishing in Washington 2011-12 regulations pamphlet.
- Pots that can be left unattended must be removed from marine waters before sunset on the last open fishing day each week.
- Puget Sound king, box and Pacific graceful crab species must be released if caught.
- Any Dungeness or red rock with a soft shell must be released even if it otherwise qualifies as a keeper. That's good since they are probably not yet fully fleshed out inside after their last shell-shedding episode. Finger test sites as well as the important Dungeness gender identification characteristics are shown on page 136 of the fishing regulations.
- Any retained legal Dungeness crabs must be logged immediately on personal catch record cards. No such accounting for red rocks is need.
Also, WDFW is interested in reports of deleterious non-native European green crabs for which considerable information is available on-line at wdfw.wa.gov/ais/species.php?Name=carcinus_maenas.
For additional information about Dungeness crabs and personal use crabbing, check out WDFW's crab Web pages at www.wdfw.wa.gov/fishing/shellfish/crab/.
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.
