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. The fools have over harvested the population because the Game and Fish Departments did not do their jobs. The harvesters over worked what Nature gave them.

US is not the problem. Russia has a massive illegal crab harvesting problem.

A FREQUENTZ WHITE PAPER:

ILLEGALLY HARVESTED CRAB HURTS US INDUSTRY AND ECONOMY

The Nature of the Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Problem Black and Grey

“Black” and “grey” fleets are two distinct types of illegal fishing vessels that one can find in Russian waters. Black fleet fishermen, also referred to as pirate fishermen, are vessels that have no licenses to fish in Russian waters and blatantly violate their sovereignty by fishing without permits. The fish product captured by these vessels is most commonly offloaded in ports in Korea and Japan via transshipment, circumventing Russian authorities altogether. Transshipment entails the transfer of fish that have been caught at sea illegally to large vessels that act as floating, chilled storage tanks and are far away from the purview of Russian authorities. These vessels are normally registered with the nationality of countries known as “Flags of Convenience” because of their lax laws and oversight of vessels. Such countries also make it easier for pirate vessels to access an otherwise legitimate registration.

Industry news coverage of seizures of black fishing vessels caught poaching in Russian waters is reasonably frequent, though the degree to which these efforts make a dent in the total amount of illegal activity is unclear. Interestingly, the seizures covered in the news most frequently identify the crew and captain of these pirate fishing vessels as being Russian, even though they are operating vessels flagged to foreign countries. A 2014 World Wildlife Federation (WWF) report noted one such example. ”In September 2014, a vessel flagged in the Republic of Togo named Katraps attempted to evade a Russian Border Patrol vessel...Upon inspection, Katraps contained fragments of crab, was equipped to transport live crab, yet had no documentation or permission to fish within the Russia’s EEZ. Katraps was crewed by 13 people – 11 Russians and 2 Ukrainians – and the ship owner was registered in Belize. The vessel was impounded in the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.” Incidents such as this one could indicate a possible association of the pirate fishing industry with Russian-based organized crime organizations—another layer to this illegal fishing issue that has yet to be fully revealed.

Grey market illegal fishing techniques are those where Russian-flagged fishing vessels and companies that are otherwise legally licensed and entitled to fish in Russian waters circumvent the law. One example of this is when licensed Russian fishing fleets significantly exceed their allowable catch quota, and then comingle the illegal product with legally caught fish. These exports from Russia are integrated into the global supply chain and further comingled with legal product as it is processed and exported to the United States and other countries, using an inherently non-transparent global supply chain system to its advantage.

As already described, the influx of this illegal product into the global market has a direct negative impact on U.S. fishermen and the U.S. economy. For example, in 2011 there was a 25% decline in the price U.S. king crab fishermen received as a result of illegal crab entering U.S. market. This decline has further downstream effects of decreasing the tax revenue and additional market impacts that this $82.9 million industry contributes to the U.S. economy. Fortunately, some governments have recently adopted regulations to help prevent illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, including separate Japanese and South Korean policies that prevent undocumented crab from passing through the country. In the past, this was a common method of grey-washing crab to blur the origin

http://frequentz.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/FQZ_WhitePaper_PoachedCrab.pdf