Time for crabbing!

[Sumbub]

I've been having the itch for the longest time this year and I've finally found the time to head out yesterday. It's just as amazing as last year. I hit 141 crabs split among 5 families in 8 hours. It was lot of work, but it was fun. Hope everyone finds time to catch them jumbos. :splitspin:splitspin

 

[Killarsox]

Where abouts do you do? This sounds like it's alot of fun.

 

[Paul B]

They are all over my marina but a little small. Next month will be perfect.

 

[Sumbub]

Hitting the south shore of LI. If you hit the low tide, the crab frenzy is amazing. The ratio is probably about 2:1 small vs keeper. Be prepared to be tossing them back out. LOL

 

[e.muehlbauer]

Fortunately, the south shore always has crabs, even in a bad year. My summer place in Cutchogue goes in cycles..some bad years, with few or no crabs, followed by good years. Right now we are having the best crab year in maybe 20 years or more...my son got 11 keepers in only 45 minutes yesterday. (We average about 10 shorts to 1 keeper at this time of year...also females have to be released regardless of size.) I'm hoping it continues. A few years ago July was good, and it was followed by a mysterious die-off in August- dead crabs everywhere. They didn't come back that summer, and I never found out what happened. Any ideas here of what it could have been? I emailed the DEC and they never responded.

 

[Sumbub]

Could it be dead zones out there in the ocean that causes it? Shellfish seems to be some of the more oxygen demanding animals out there. When the caught crabs are sitting in buckets in transit, if there's not enough humidity and cool air going through the bucket, it seems they're prone to die quickly.

 

[e.muehlbauer]

This isn't the ocean....its a salt marsh....flushed by tides twice a day. Any dead zone would have affected lots more than blue crabs.

 

[Sumbub]

Oops. My bad. :tongue1: That is true.

 

[JonnyIce]

Shellfish are more of the hypoxia-sensitive animals in the water. When I was doing my research on low DO levels in the LI Sound, many references to lobster death came about...mainly because they are at the ocean floor and first to feel the hit.

Could it be dead zones out there in the ocean that causes it? Shellfish seems to be some of the more oxygen demanding animals out there. When the caught crabs are sitting in buckets in transit, if there's not enough humidity and cool air going through the bucket, it seems they're prone to die quickly.

 

[Paul B]

While lobster diving in the Sound many years ago I noticed that all the lobsters were dying and walking around in the day time which they never do.
I called the Dept of envirnemental conservation to tell them that something was wrong with the lobsters and they just blew me off. Now there are hardly no lobsters in the Sound.

 

[JonnyIce]

When I was doing my research I got very little help from anyone, including the local EPA, etc... at any rate here is a quickie:
http://www.epa.gov/region1/eco/lis/ccmp/hypox.html

and then back to HAPPIER crabbing news

 

[Paul B]

JohnnyIce, great article. I have ben diving in the Sound for 40 years and it is amazing the life that has disappeared almost completely.
Fishing there is almost useless except for stripped bass.
There are no more flounders and I used to spear two at a time, we also used to get our limit of 6 lobsters a day after throwing back 10 or 15 shorts.
Fluke also used to be very common, I have not seen one lately.
It is a shame.

 

[JonnyIce]

it's pretty much the same reaction as our tanks...people dumped waste mercilessly into the sound...therefore nitrogen and phosphate levels were up...this lead to an algal bloom...which hurts in two ways...blocks sun from getting to photosynthetic organisms down below AND when the algae dies it sucks up all the dissolved oxygen on the way down to the sea floor. so the guys who crawl along the bottom and can't move to a higher DO saturated location lose out . still love your lobster diving photo in the other thread Paul