TIDE BITS: Blue Crab Trap Fishery

Crab traps are baited wire cages, which rest on the seafloor. A buoy, often an empty soda bottle, tethered to the trap helps the fishermen find it.  The trap’s funneled sides make it easy for crabs to enter but hard for them to leave.  During the peak season crab fishermen, like lobstermen, run their lines of traps inshore, on the coasts and estuaries near Peñasco. At Bahia San Jorge, 50 kilometers south of Peñasco, a fisheries cooperative determines the capture rate for its crab fishery.  In this community, pick up trucks ferry fishermen, boats and traps back and forth along 12 kilometers of beach. At the end of the harvest they are weighted down with packed crates of crab. The crabs are later shipped and canned elsewhere, bringing little return to the community.