“It’s really just a sad situation,” said Louisiana Seafood board member Keith Watts. “All these guys are pretty much in the same boat right now. You’re just not going to make a living in the water right now. We’re just not catching any crabs.” Photo: Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News
by Ashton Daigle/Louisiana Seafood News
A number of factors could be responsible for one of the worst crop of crabs in Pontchartrain Basin and Lake Maurepas, including colder surface and water temperatures.
Gary Bauer, owner of crabmeat Slidell processing company Pontchartrain Blue Crab, reported that this is the slowest he has ever in all the years he’s been in the business.
Bauer is a member of the Louisiana Crab Task Force, and its former chairman, said the lack of crabs is not contained to any one area, but across the entire Lake Pontchartrain Basin.
Waiting for crab boats at his docks, Gary Bauer, owner of Pontchartrain Blue Crab in Slidell, takes calls from buyers looking for Louisiana Blue Crabs on his cell. Photo: Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News
“This is the slowest it’s ever been,” he explained. “I’ve been in this business now for the past 14 years and I have never seen it like this. For the last eight to ten months there have been no crabs.”
Current Crab Task Force chairman Keith Watts echoed Bauer’s concerns.
“It’s really just a sad situation,” Watts said. “All these guys are pretty much in the same boat right now. You’re just not going to make a living in the water right now. We’re just not catching any crabs.”
Every Trick in the Book
The newly appointed Louisiana Seafood Board member said he recently used several large female “shedder” crabs, which are essentially ripe females, to try to attract males.
“These females, while in this crustacean version of heat, emit pheromones that under normal circumstances attract large numbers of male crabs,” he explained.
The crabs were placed in traps and lowered into the lake in several different areas.
“Normally there would be a lot of male crabs ending up in the trap with her,” Watts said. “But each time we put a trap down, there were no male crabs when it came back up. If there aren’t male crabs flocking to a trap with a ready female like this, there aren’t any male crabs”
Possible Causes for Shortage
Both Watts and Bauer said there could be multiple factors affecting the supply, or lack of supply. of crabs in the lake. One is cooler water temperature.
Watts prepares a crab trap before heading onto Lake Pontchartrain. Photo: Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News
“We have had a later than usual winter, with lingering cold fronts that keep coming down on us,” Bauer said. “The water temperatures have not warmed up.”
Another natural cause possible in playing a role in the decline of supply is hypoxia -lower oxygen levels in the water – caused by Hurricane Isaac.
The winds and high tides associated with Isaac have added decaying animal and plant matter. This natural occurring change lowers oxygen levels, a usually short-term phenomenon.
“Oxygen levels can decrease following a storm like Isaac, but this is usually a very short term thing,” Bauer said. “Long term, hurricanes and tropical storms fertilize the waters. After Katrina, we saw a lot more crabs than usual.”
Bauer said the closing of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet is also likely to have effected the situation.
“What the closing did was cut off and restrict the flow of water,” Bauer said. “This, in turn, restricts the flow of blue crab larvae.”
Another often-overlooked cause for concern is the lack of egg bearing females this spring. The normal run of sponge crabs on the outside edge of the marsh in the Chandelier and Breton Sounds never materialize.
“Generally this time of year in the saltier water of the sounds, the egg laying female crabs overwhelm the traps, 25 – 40 per trap,” to the point where fishermen must move away from these areas,” explained Watts. “This year there was absolutely none to be found. If there are no egg bearing females, or the few that are out there are barren and are not laying eggs, what does that say for any future recovery in subsequent seasons,” he questioned.
Combined these factors could be having an adverse impact on blue crab production and growth.
The Elephant in the Room
In addition the Deepwater Horizon spill may also be playing in a role in the shortage. However, Bauer said he is hesitant to blame the spill outright without further study.
Crab pots sit empty at Bauer’s crab processing plant in Slidell. Photo: Ed Lallo/Louisiana Seafood News
“I don’t want to be the one out there pointing my finger at the spill,” Bauer said. “I’m not a scientist.”
Watts agreed noting that following the spill in 2010 Governor Jindal hired scientists to perform a study to examine potential future impacts of the oil spill on the Gulf of Mexico.
“We were told then in 2010 that we probably would not fully see the impacts of the spill until 2013,” explained Watts. “The life cycle of a blue crab is three years. The crabs usually migrate out towards areas of higher salinity levels. If the eggs that were laid then were destroyed, there’s been nothing to replace them. This is a tell tale sign to me, that something is wrong.”
Watts noted that crab production can and does run in cycles with the seasons. “But there are low cycles and there are low cycles,” Watts said. “Even the low cycles we have seen in the past, has never been this low.”
No Magic Bullet
For the time being, Watts and Bauer and hundreds of crabbers across the region are waiting in nervous anticipation, hoping that nature will repair itself.
“The problem is that there is no magic bullet,” Bauer said. “I know how much trouble I’m having right now. And I know how much trouble a lot of other guys are having. To be honest, I really hope it isn’t related to the oil spill. At least if it is something natural, given time, Mother Nature will correct herself. A man-made situation, though, that could be a whole different animal.”
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