it just seams they have no chance to get away since you could almost literally walk across the water on the crab trap floats they have so many out there. where I crab there are no less then 100 traps all around me and I have to watch so I don't run over floats as I try to crab, and that's in a 40 ft wide canal only about 2 miles long.
im as anti regulation as they come but it seams the crab traps outnumber the crabs in most areas and I believe there needs to be "some" reduction in the numbers of traps allowed for commercials per license. I think the large reductions of numbers of crabs caught in the last 15 years are a direct result from commercial overfishing to the point commercials need to run hundreds more traps then they did before to catch the same numbers and recreationals have trouble going catch crabs with the family in areas where that never happened.
I think if you want to see a damaged crabbing fishery that needs urgent monitoring, you should put a lot of resources into looking at the lake ponchartrain crab fishery.
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