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Crawfish Season
Is Slow I found your article and the hostilities toward "foreigners" it contained deeply disturbing. Other than the general observation that the first few weeks of crawfish season were bringing less than average returns, there were few scientific observations and even fewer reasoned conclusions. Please consider the following: The vast majority of "foreigners" who come to Abaco spend little time under water. Of those who do dive for fish and crawfish, no one has presented any factual data that would support the rampant levels of poaching which your article implies. In my 14 years of experience in Abaco, my observation is that the vast majority of "foreigners" in Abaco who dive for crawfish fully and honestly obey the regulations. As a follower of your police reports, my informal count would indicate that "foreigners" lag considerably behind locals as caught offenders, both in the number of incidents and the amounts of crawfish poached. Sadly, there are those who will abuse most any law or regulation, but please point out both locals and "foreigners" who do so and encourage compliance, not divisiveness. Also try to keep the relatively few offenders in proportion to the majority who comply with both the laws and the spirit of the laws. Please consider that all "foreigners" dive for crawfish without the aid of compressors or SCUBA tanks - which are completely forbidden and strictly enforced. Assuming you are not familiar with the difference this makes (since it was not even mentioned in your article), please accept that the difference is simply huge. I would wager that the average "foreigner" can't free dive much below 15 feet of depth, let alone turn over a heavy trap and try to spear the crawfish which are trying to escape, all on one breath of air. Sure, a few can but does that represent even a tiny fraction of all "foreigners" - I doubt it. Without compressors or tanks, all traps and reefs much below 15 feet are simply out of reach for free diving (no compressor or SCUBA tank) "foreigners." Relatively few traps are placed in depths of less than 15 feet and the rest which are deeper are not generally accessible to free diving "foreigners." (By the way, fishermen will tell you that traps are also turned over by turtles, sharks and dolphins.) Without compressors or tanks "foreigners" must swim on the surface and look down for crawfish well hidden in the recesses of the reefs. Local divers with compressors can swim along the face of the reef at any chosen depth and look directly into the recesses for crawfish and fish. Once spotted, they can stay at the hole indefinitely until they have cleaned it out. Try that on one breath of air. In a day a single diver using a compressor can sweep a reef clean of crawfish - 50 free diving "foreigners" could not match the take. Let me make an educated guess that a couple of "foreigners" on vacation spend about $400 per day to be in Abaco with a boat and fuel. If they are good divers (most aren't) and get the 12 crawfish allowed, it has cost them $33.33 per crawfish for dinner (or about $66.66 per pound). Every dollar goes directly into the pockets of Abaconians. I think this is what the Bahamas Tourist Board is trying to accomplish. When a local fisherman finishes his day, he sells the catch for around $9 per pound, and it is promptly frozen and shipped out of the country. Using this basic math, it seems pretty obvious that "foreigners" are returning a lot more value to the Bahamas per pound of crawfish taken here than local divers. "Foreigners" face a daunting hurdle doing anything with their captured crawfish other than having them for dinner. U.S. Customs confiscates excess crawfish at the airports. Any smuggled back on a boat must be lied about on entry (a federal offense punishable by jail) and are subject to inspection by a host of federal, state and local officials. Sure, some boats do this, but the potential cost is huge. Once smuggled back, how do they sell crawfish with spear holes in them - even a tougher gauntlet to run. Not to mention the threat of confiscation of your vessel in the Bahamas if "foreigners" are caught breaking the law - believe me, that gives even the densest of us "foreigners" a moment's pause. Locals who poach from traps that are not theirs, or out of season, merely throw the catch in with their next sale and it becomes cash. Yes, "foreigners" generally have GPS position plotters on their boats - as do most Bahamian fishermen. However, that technology only helps relocate a trap or a known fishing spot - it doesn't find it in the first place. Local crawfishermen have located and placed hundreds or even thousands of traps and keep a closely guarded logbook containing the location of each and every trip. That location (the "numbers") are then used to find the traps over and over, in good weather and bad, using GPS to assist. Without access to these logbooks, "foreigners" may just as well use their GPS to find a restaurant. What is it in human nature that causes the type of finger pointing against a minority group (in this case "foreigners") referenced in your article? Agreed, the early harvest is down this year. The conclusion seems to be that it results from hoards of "foreigners" scooping up the crawfish before professional local divers with compressors and GPS locations in hand could get to them. That just doesn't make sense. The vast majority of traps and reefs are out of reach of the compressor-less "foreign" hoards. I happened to be around Abaco during most of August and it looked pretty empty of "foreigners" to me. How about verifying the "foreign" hoards of poachers theory with local hotels and restaurants "most of which are closed," airlines (reduced schedules) and immigration (cruising permits and fishing licenses) to see if the facts on tourist numbers support the "hoard of "foreign" poachers" conclusion. Right now, I am comfortable with my observation that "foreigners" are scarce as hen's teeth. Should we conclude that articles like this don't make them feel welcome? Here we have just suffered a massive ecological change (Floyd, Dennis and Irene) and many somehow conclude the problem with the crawfish harvest is "foreigners." Wow! Did anyone bother to investigate if there were fewer or more "foreigners" here during the bountiful catches of previous years? Did they analyze the number of compressor permits issued for crawfishing throughout the Bahamas (and make an estimate of the huge numbers of unpermitted compressors being used)? Did they determine if a larger proportion of Bahamian crawfishermen are now fishing in northern waters? Did anyone check with any scientists to see if the breeding and migration season has been delayed by the storms or other factors? Has the massive tonnage of tin dissolving from the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of tin traps dropped on the bottom somehow finally poisoned the fishing grounds? (You may have noticed that tin-based bottom paints are banned in the U.S. because the tin dissolved in saltwater was scientifically determined to kill plants and animals.) Did they consider the well publicized phenomenon of La Niña and the changes of ocean temperatures and what effect that might have on crawfish spawning, growth and migration patterns here? How long has it been since acre-sized shoals of crawfish were reported by the mail boat captains swimming on the surface at night during a migration (many years). What major changes were underway in this fishery before this season (a whole bunch). What would we conclude if the catch picks up later in the season - that "foreigners" are forgiven and welcomed back with their tourist dollars. Admittedly, my experience and knowledge base is only with tourist type "foreigners." I am aware that there are other types such as long liners and dive operators who enter Bahamian waters without permission and fish without permits. That type of offender has a much larger potential for damaging the resource than the tourist type. Possibly we should not lump them both under the heading "foreigners" when dealing with this issue. Let's not forget that the tourists are here as invited guests of the Bahamian people to share the natural bounty and beauty there (as well as leave millions of dollars annually for the Bahamian people). Whatever fish and crawfish they take here legally are more than compensated with the dollars they spend just being here. If non-permitted boats are the offenders here, doesn't that call for a completely different approach than "banning all "foreigners" from crawfishing?" While your article may reflect a general sentiment among native Abaconians, that does not lessen your responsibility to educate your readers by providing a factual and accurate assessment of the situation. Let's get past the finger pointing and divisive rhetoric and ask the hard scientific questions. If the finding is that overfishing of the resource has occurred, (where have we heard that before?) let's deal with it in a measured and reasoned process which will fix the problem, not just place the blame on outsiders. Just recall how badly we screwed up the striped bass fishery on the East coast of the U.S., blaming every possible group and factor except the major reason - overfishing the resource. The fix was tough on many, but it is fixed. We all want to see a healthy crawfish fishery here and are willing to make shared sacrifices to fix it. Let's get on with it. Robert Koury |
