how much did the camera crew have pay to the fleet to cover this cult series?

Tracking devices won’t do anyone but the marine biologists any good. The crabs move in herds that can cover the entire Bering Sea over a period of time with their migrations. Because of this, tagged crabs might not be in an area that is open for fishing in the following season. What good does it do anyone but a biologist to know that the crab are in a protected zone?

Crab are heavily preyed on by other species in the Bering Sea. When cod and pollock and halibut have been opened up, depending on the area they were caught in and the time of year, they have been found with their guts full of undersized crab from an inch to an inch and a half across the carapace lateral diameter. There is a great irony in this, because before the bycatch quotas were instituted for the bottom trawlers, some of the captains running those boats were determined to wipe out the crab and get rid of the crab fishermen and their crab pots along with the crabs. Had those captains had any understanding of the feeding habits of their target species, they would have realized that success in this endeavor to eradicate the presence of crab in their fishing grounds would have resulted in starvation and loss of numbers in their targeted species. When fish are in short supply of food, they cannibalize their young.

The bycatch quota for the individual larger bottom trawlers was larger than the total catch allotted the entire crab fleet at one time. The trawlers had a humongous number of crab they could crush with their gear, which consisted of tires cut into disks and then strung on a lead cable that would churn the bottom and force sole and other similar species up into open water where the nets could scoop them up. Since crab fishermen and bottom trawlers fish the same areas, having the tracker crabs scooped up by trawlers or crushed by their gear would hardly be conducive to better fishing for the crab fleet.

That question has been answered pretty well in other posts on this subject. Yep, the visibility makes it impractical. It’s not the cost. The sonar and radar on the boats cost as much or more than a deep sea camera would. A lot of times the bottom is like a washing machine full of mud. All you will see is silt swirling around in the surge, tides and currents, unless it’s a really, and I mean REALLY nice day, and those kind of days are rare during the fishing season if they exist at all.

Why is the gear so heavy?

Those people who said the gear would bob around and float away are correct. The crab pot has to remain stationary on the bottom in order to attract crab. The crab are scavengers, not active hunters. They are not going to chase their food, they go for whatever is lying around waiting to be picked up. And crabs crawl, they don’t swim.

Why not use larger crab pots?

In the boom days of the industry when there was ten times as much crab or more, many larger boats used 10 X 10 foot crab pots. Smaller vessels used the 7 X 7’s or 6 X 6’s. As the number of crab significantly diminished, the emphasis was on spreading out the gear and the capacity of the 10 X 10’s became obsolete and useless. Now, almost all the boats use the 6 X 6’s because they can carry more gear and use the smaller pots over a wider area.

What is the depth at which crab are found?

It depends on the area that is open for fishing and the species being fished and hopefully caught. Some areas have a maximum depth of around 70 fathoms and a minimum depth of around 60 fathoms. Other areas are deeper or shallower. Blue kings are often found in shallow areas of 30 to 40 fathoms. Red kings live in deeper waters. Brown kings like the really deep water, 250 to 350 fathoms, which is why the pots are dropped on a continuous string of interconnected lines with hookup links, rather than singly as is done at lesser depths. Opillios are often found in the 60 and 70 fathom depths, bairdi are found in the shallower areas of 40 to 60 fathoms, though in some areas they are found where ever they feel like hanging out.

How are the crab found?

Sonar is used to find crab and fish. Biomass shows up as a different color from the bottom of the sea. Depending on the shape and color of the biomass, it can indicate a bundle of crab or of fish, or just something in the area that shows up. Crab are like locusts, eating everything in their path, so they have to keep moving in order to feed themselves. When the food sources are scarce they fan out and may not show up on the sonar simply because there aren’t enough of them in a group to register on the sonar. When they are mating they will ball up, when the food source is concentrated in a small area they will ball up, otherwise, it is a matter of using good bait and leaving the gear to soak long enough for the crab in the area to migrate toward the crab pots. Soaking time is determined by how many crab gather in a given time in the pots. Usually 12 hours is enough soaking time to tell if there are enough crab in the area to make it worth staying there.

Why not use a snugging attachment on the boom for precision handling of the gear?

Well, the crane used to stack the pots is set up for that. It has a tire mounted on the bottom of a cage around the hook to cushion the pot so that the frame doesn’t get bent. That type of set up might work for lauching the pots, but retrieving them with that kind of set up would be a trick and a half. In order to draw the pot up with a snugging harness, it would have to be hooked on the center piece of the pot’s framework. And since crab pots don’t float and they are drawn in on their side to the boat because they don’t float, the logistics make any attempt to do things that way dangerous and even silly. It’s just a really bad idea. By attaching the buoy harness to one end of the pot and then manually landing it on the launcher, the safest and most efficient way to retrieve the pot is already being used.

What type of bait is used and why?

The plastic jars with the screw-on lids hung in the pots have crushed herring in them. The oil from the herring disperses over a wide area draws the crabs to the pots. Whole cod fish are hung in the pots to give them something to gnaw on until the pot is retrieved. The openings through which the crab enter the pot are set up so that they are pointed upward, toward the top of the pot. This helps to keep the crab in, but some were escaping by crawling around on the top webbing and then finding the way back out by dropping out of the opening. Special “hoods” were eventually designed by a fisherman and later marketed to the fleet to keep this from happening. The crabs can crawl in, but they can’t drop out. On king crab pots they use plastic “triggers”. Flexible plastic fingers close the opening, but allow the kings to push through into the pot. Because the fingers point inward and won’t flex outward, the kings are trapped. The kings were the Houdinis of the crabs until this invention (by yet another fisherman) was developed, they crawled in and out of pots at will. Because the hoods and triggers are snap-tied with plastic retainer strips, they can be changed at will to catch the different species of crabs so that a boat doesn’t have to have special gear for each species.

How dangerous is crab fishing?

It’s actually safer now to crab fish than it has ever been. In the old days they didn’t have sea walls to keep the waves off the deck from the side that wasn’t being used to haul gear. Waves could sweep across the deck and take everything with them, sometimes an entire deck crew. King coilers have made bringing the pots up faster and easier than ever before. In the old days, when everyone hand-coiled the buoy lines, there was a greater chance of the line slipping out of the shives and the coiler man and anyone else in the way being jerked and tangled in the line as the draw of the boat and the sinking pot pulled the line overboard. A lot more people were lost or maimed or killed in the old days. It’s still not safe or easy, but things have improved.

How about weighing the crabs?

Well, each holding tank has a given known capacity in tons, so weighing each individual crab that comes on board would be silly. The captain already knows how much each hold weighs when it has only water, or it is full of crabs and water, or it is empty. A lot of holds actually have markers to indicate depth so that partial tonnage can be estimated fairly close to what it actually is.

How important are the restrictions on capacity?

Well, if you have ever been on a boat that was so overloaded with crab pots that the scuppers on the working deck were almost to the water line, you would know why the coast guard started paying attention to this sort of thing. Some captains let greed outweigh their common sense and their sense of survival. A lot of boats were lost in the old days because they were overloaded with gear and capsized in the first hint of rough seas, and some were swamped by waves when they were already low in the water and simply sank under the additional weight of the wave. Pumping water off an open deck when your boat is already under the surface of the water is pretty much impossible.

Sonar is really only good for things off of the ocean floor - since you’re sending sonar a few hundred feet, nobody’s gonna notice when it bounces off a crab that’s only a few inches higher than the ocean floor.

Steel crab pots are cheaper than those made from any sort of specialty material - aluminum, graphite, etc. Plastics aren’t robust enough. Pots get lost - steel is still the most cost-effective to replace.

If a crew member gets hurt by a heavy pot, does that affect the bottom line of the boats finances? Only until a replacement can be brought aboard. In the long run, running a dangerous operation like a crab boat is still cost effective - no lawsuits flying around to speak of.