Off the coast of Seadrift in upper Hynes Bay, local volunteers John Pistone and RJ Shelly searched the shorelines and open water for white buoys that might indicate the presence of a derelict crab trap.
As they began to retrieve abandoned crab traps, they discovered that many contained both live and dead crabs, as well as the occasional small fish. After taking notes on the Collector for ArcGIS app, they released the live crabs, crushed the trap flat to stack on the back of the boat and moved on to search for more bobbling buoys.
The Abandoned Crab Trap Removal Program, which was created in 2001 by Texas legislators, takes place across the entire Texas coast with collection sites from Lower Laguna Madre in Brownsville up to Sabine Lake in Port Arthur. It serves to not only clean up abandoned traps that litter the coast and create visual pollution, but also to preserve vital resources for animals like the endangered whooping crane, which feeds on crustaceans and small fish.
When crabs get trapped, they can often attract other crabs and marine life, according to RJ Shelly, Calhoun County extension agent. When lost or abandoned traps continue to actively trap, it’s defined as ghost fishing, which can be detrimental to the ecosystem.
“It’s very important to remove these old traps from the bays,” said co-organizer Katie Swanson, Mission-Aransas Reserve Stewardship Coordinator at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute in a press release. “Not only are they a source of ghost fishing, but they’re also navigation hazards.”
With the program having recently completed its 19th year of volunteers gathering lost and abandoned crab traps, the San Antonio Bay Partnership reported that more than 1,600 traps were collected from Lavaca/Matagorda, San Antonio and Aransas bays in the Texas mid-coast.
Programs like these are an important part of sustaining our environmental resources, and community members can play an active role in helping maintain not just our coastal ecosystems, which have both recreational and commercial importance in our region, but our environment as a whole.
“While the cleanup is a lot of work, it is essential for keeping our bays clean and productive – and it’s fun,” said Allan Berger, chairman of the board of directors for the San Antonio Bay Partnership.