Why don’t the Deadliest Catch crab boats use cameras?
Friday, May 30th, 2008Ok, I’m sure I’m going to get flamed here by folks who are far more knowledgeable than I am, but I’ve had a nagging question in the back of my head for a while now, and its time I put it out there:
Why don’t the crab boats use underwater cameras to actually look for crab, instead of just blindly dropping pots where they think they’ll be?
First off, yes, I know they’re fishing in the middle of the Bering Sea, but my understanding is that they’re not in actual “deep” water but rather on a kind of extended shelf that’s actually relatively shallow. So it stands to reason that a reasonably-tough underwater camera should be able to manage the depths along their usual fishing grounds. Heck, if memory serves, I seem to remember the film crew for Deadliest Catch actually dropping a camera along with a crab pot and watching the little suckers climb on in. So from a technical standpoint, it doesn’t seem like it would be all that difficult. Ok, maybe its a little difficult, but surely not impossible? And considering the millions of dollars at stake, surely a $15,000 camera might be worth the investment?
So am I crazy, or does this make sense to anyone else? I’m sure I can’t be the first to think this up, so I imagine there must be a good reason why crabbers don’t do this. But it seems to me that they could just sink a camera with its own light on a sounding string in areas where they believe they will find biomass, and within just a few minutes they’ll know whether or not its worth dropping a pot on that spot.
Is it a technical issue?
Is it a license issue? (i.e. is it considered an unfair advantage to use it?)
Do the crab just move too fast for it to matter where they are at any given moment? (I’d find this hard to believe!)
Is it just a matter of the crabbers being too cheap or too set in their ways to invest in high-tech equipment?
Or is it something else??
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
