MOUNT VERNON — While most crab pots sent into the depths of the Salish Sea are recovered with or without crab, many are not.
Pots remaining on the seafloor can cause havoc for years, trapping and killing marine wildlife unlucky enough to be caught.
The Northwest Straits Foundation is doing something about that.
The organization will be in the waters near Anacortes late this month or early June to remove derelict crab pots located in the Cap Sante Marina and Guemes Island areas.
“The goal is to have the removals done before the recreational crabbing opener, which is typically mid-July in that area,” said Northwest Straits Foundation Marine Projects Manager Jason Morgan.
The work to remove the derelict crab pots is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
The Northwest Straits Foundation will use side scan sonar to identify the location of lost pots, which allows divers to enter the water at the exact spot to make a retrieval.
“We identify those survey areas based on factors we are aware of that lead directly to gear loss,” Morgan said. “Places we know that have heavy efforts, places like this with swift currents, changes in depth and a lot of vessel traffic. This area has all those and so that’s how we define project areas.”
Morgan said in past derelict gear surveys conducted by the foundation, this particular area had one of the highest densities of lost pots.
In 2018, a side sonar survey revealed 614 derelict crab pots. Of those, 486 were recovered.
“What was unique about it, with an estimated 12,000 crab pots lost in the Puget Sound each year, about 70 percent of those are from the recreational sector,” Morgan said. “In this area, that was flip-flopped and we saw about 70 percent commercial, so that is something completely different.”
