The inshore pot fishery for brown crab (Cancer pagurus) landing into south east Ireland: estimate of yield and assessment of status

Abstract

Although it is regarded as an important focus of brown crab Cancer pagurus landings, the fishery in south east Ireland is poorly documented and the official statistics are believed to under-record the species by a factor of 2-3. This appraisal of the south east Ireland brown crab fishery is based on >22,000 records of sales transactions from the 1990s and a comparison of the biological characteristics of landings in the late 1960s with thirty years later, in the context of increasing fishing effort. The three buyers who gave access to their books inwards for periods of the 1990s, purchase from the same fishing community and they compete for product but they occupy slightly different market niches: a vivier truck operator exports to Spain, a processor concentrates on autumn purchases of female crab for vacuum packing while the third buys crab claws for human consumption and crab bodies which are used as bait for whelk Buccinum undatum. Only the first sales of crab from 55 km of coastline are considered. In this area fishing effort doubled between 1972 and 1988 but expansion accelerated in the following decade by at least 128%; a single operator increased his effort by 80% between 1988 and 1998. In the 30 years after 1968, the number of pots per km of coastline rose by 241%.The sale of brown crab is recorded in consignments which are raised to live weights in the analysis. Consignment size fell steeply in the late 1980s and early 1990s after which it stabilised; adjusting the figures to allow for increasing effort accentuated the trend; at the same time consignment number rose. Allowing that a decline in consignment size was accompanied by an increase in pot number, consignment number should have risen by 310% to maintain landings at the level recorded in 1990; the largest recorded increase in consignment number was by 230% and while it is accepted that all sales transactions have not been obtained, it is likely that LPUE has been declining over the 1990s in real terms in this fishery. Increasing fishing effort during that time is seen as a product of better technology, stimulated by a desire to compensate for falling LPUE. Comparison of size and sex composition of the landings recorded in the late 1960s and the late 1990s are inconclusive. Depth of water and type of substratum are likely to influence the composition of inshore landings. An argument is presented that the south east inshore crab fishery is fully or over-exploited. It is likely to have an offshore component and such occasional data as are available on brown crab further south suggest that the offshore is an under-exploited fishery. In which case, the rate of interchange between the two components is likely to be crucial to the continued performance of the inshore fishery