A lot to crab about

Crab fishermen have been having it pretty rough. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, the critters got skinnier and had a hard time making the trip to markets that were farther away. Nobody ever officially linked this problem to the oil spill. But the crabbers say they don’t need a lot of studies to see the relationship between cause and effect.

Maybe they’re right. I certainly can’t tell. But I don’t make a living on the water and have a lifetime of experience handling crabs – other than on a table with a heavy butterknife in my hand – what I was taught is the Cajun equivalent of a Baltimore crab mallet – to be the guy you want to come to for a straight answer on that.

The crabs did get healthier, however, and there were less problems with them after a while. But there is clear evidence that something needs to be done for the fishery to stay as healthy as we all would like. Crabs were close to overfished here in Louisiana. And that’s a problem because so many people rely on them for a living to be made. There are not just the fishermen. There are the crab picking factories were workers prepare the critters for markets all over as meat with no shells to worry about. Then there are the restaurants and the seafood stores not to mention the docks. Everybody is connected.

The experts at SeaGrant say crabs have been on the downswing since about the year 2000.

Figures released by the state in 2016 show the crab population – not the harvest but the population – to be at around 14.3 million pounds. Crabs would be considered overfished at 17.1 million.

Action had to be taken and it was.

The closure began the third Monday in February, which some considered a good time since there was already a traditional shutdown for cleanup of crab traps to cull out “ghost traps” that mess up peoples’ boats.

Jeff Marx, the program manager for fisheries at the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries said the February through March closure made sense because historically that’s when the “skinny” crabs are harvested. The extra time will allow female crabs to lay their eggs and for babies to grow.

A lot of people in the industry said something should be done, and that’s why the Crab Task Force – made up of industry people – recommended this as the way to go.

Nobody had much to say back last year when the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission went with the recommendation. But now, with the closure upon us, a lot of people had a lot to say. They blamed a few people on the Task Force including Trudy Luke, who buys and sells crabs in Dulac.

“If we didn’t do this they would have stepped in and done something worse,” she said, the last time I spoke with her about it.

It was only recently that word of the closure got to everybody, and then everybody started blaming the people whose names they saw in the newspapers who took a stand on the issue. In particular people were hammering hard on Trudy Luke, who has been in the crab business forever and depends on the crabs for her living. Somehow they forgot that it was a whole big board that made the majority decision, that it was not just one or two people on the board.

A female crab can law between 750,000 to eight million eggs in her lifetime, the biologist say.

That’s one of the reasons why they maintain giving the crabs a chance to spawn for a short time will yield dividends in the long haul. And crabs here, as opposed to the Chesapeake, mature within a year to harvesting size.

Yes, people have said that the closure should come at a different time, maybe early winter. And maybe that can be addressed at future meetings.

But it’s a shame that people who have proven themselves to be vital voices in the industry have been subjected to abuse on social media and in other ways, merely for speaking up about the importance of timely conservation.

The weather has been warm lately, giving lot of people the itch to crab more quickly.

But hopefully people will stop being mean to others who may have a different view. Hopefully the benefits of the shutdown will be seen very soon, within the three years that have been allotted for the practice. And hopefuly, when traps splash into the water again, everyone will keep on making a living.