According to scientists abandoned crab pots are the most prolific killers of blue crab. It wasn’t striped bass or eel, which feast on juvenile crabs. Instead, it was muck-covered steel baskets, better known as crab pots. Scientists estimate that more than 100,000 crab pots are abandoned — most are accidentally cut lose by boat propellers — annually off the shores of Virginia.
These traps are also known as “ghost” or “derelict” crab pots, fall to the bottom of the bay, where they attract crab and fish for a year until the steel dissolves into salt water. The watermen were still out, earning $300 a day plus fuel costs, removing the crab pots. This winter, the removal program recovered 6,436 crab pots and other debris as of March 6, the most current information available.
Kirk Havens, an oceanographer at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point, said that it is a practical application of science. He also told that the cleanup program was created by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, which utilized part of $10 million that Congress last fall awarded to the state’s struggling watermen. Fishermen have used wire cutters to pull the pot apart and free its marine life, which included a few toadfish and an oyster.
It is fact that the Chesapeake Bay is littered with the ghost pots, but he does question that watermen lose 100,000 of them each year. Scientists admit results from the removal program are not certain. But still they are hopeful that this could be done with joint effort by fishermen.
