The abandoned crab traps had silently going about their grim business of annually trapping, killing and wasting of tens of thousand of crabs, fish and other marine animals. The state’s coastal fisheries managers well know the numbers of abandoned crab traps because of an innovative programme.
Texas wasn’t the first state to recognize the problems caused by derelict crab traps and so the authority has set up the Texas Abandoned Crab Trap Removal Program. This year any crab in Texas water is considered litter and can be removed and trashed, informed the authority.
Crab traps are always useful for commercial crabbers as they don’t want to lose their traps. But due to storms these traps were carried away hundreds of yards across the bay bottom leaving it impossible to locate. The lost traps eventually succumb to the harsh, corrosive effects of saltwater, rusting and falling apart.
Record shows that these abandoned or lost traps proved to be the death trap of more than three-dozen species of marine and even a few terrestrial animals. It in 2001 that the Texas Legislature has addressed the issue by passing a bill creating a short closed season for crabbing on the Texas coast.
During a 2002-2006 study TPWD has found only 37 percent of the traps fit with the biodegradable panels, and the panel had worked as designed in only 36 percent of those. Following Texas’ lead other states have also started the same programme to remove the derelict crabs.
