SKIPPER'S BLOG: A Taste for Crab

For those out there who aren’t terribly well versed when it comes to the Newfoundland and Labrador fishery, there’s actually concern amongst many fisherman about cod numbers growing in the bays.

“What?!” you ask. “Fishermen aren’t shouting ‘Hosanna on high’ from the mountains far and near that cod fish numbers appear to be on the upswing?!”

No. No they are not.

And the reason they are not is because they are very worried about what effect increased cod numbers will have on the two fisheries that actually drive the industry — namely, crab and shrimp.

See, cod aren’t picky eaters. They’ll eat absolutely anything. And they’ll eat a lot of it.

And one of the things fishermen say they really like a lot is the taste of young snow crab. They don’t even need garlic butter — as soon as they spot the crawling shellfish it’s like the sound of a dinner bell ringing, and they just dig right in.

And here’s the proof.

Regular Navigator contributor John Gillett from Twillingate recently sent us these two photos showing the contents of the stomachs of cod hauled up recently. Guess what he found?

They’re stuffed to the gills with crab. The same crab that was worth about $251 million to the $1 billion fishery in this province in 2011. For those doing the math, that’s one quarter of the entire produced value of the industry in a calendar year.

And it’s getting eaten by a species that was worth about $11 million during that same time frame.

Now we know we shouldn’t let economics be the deciding factor for anything, but it’s hard not to get a little jumpy when you see these sorts of things isn’t it?

“Nearly every cod has snow crab in them. Somebody is going to have to make a decision — do we want a shell fish fishery or a cod fishery,” Gillett said in his email when he sent us the photos.

“I have never seen so many fish in all my years fishing.”

Yikes.

Oh, and we’d also like to point out the shiny thing in the pile of crab in the first photo. See it there?

Yeah. That’s a granola bar wrapper.

So there’s more proof that cod will eat anything – especially if it’s shiny.

Oh, and I guess it also proves that humans are idiots who love slinging crap and garbage into the ocean. Well done. Sounds like a blog for another day.