April 20, 2020 — A new program is targeting the thousands of abandoned crab traps that litter Louisiana’s coastal waterways.
Louisiana Sea Grant, a coastal advocacy and research group based at LSU, has received a $40,000 federal grant to lead the project. The money comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Louisiana leads the nation in the number of commercial blue crab fishermen, with more than 2,500 license holders who have no limit on the number of traps they can operate, Louisiana Sea Grant says in a news release. Some commercial crabbers run as many as 800 to 2,000 traps each.
In addition, Louisiana has more than 6,600 licensed recreational crab fishermen who can operate 10 traps each.
Between commercial and recreational crabbers, there can be more than 66,000 traps in the water, the group says.
“On average, 130 traps per crabber are lost each year due to storms, accidents and intentional abandonment,” Sea Grant says. “The result is in an estimated 11 million crabs lost to ghost fishing by derelict traps. Other fish, such as red drum, black drum and summer flounder also can get stuck in the traps.