Number of days after death before dead P. pelagicus were completely removed (i.e., the animal was completely eaten or had decayed and no part of the animal was visible) as a percentage of the total number of dead crabs.
Using the crab catch and escapement rates achieved during these experiments, combined with the range of estimates of pot loss in the commercial fishery reported by Sumpton et al. (2003), it was possible to estimate the number of P. pelagicus that are caught by ghost fishing pots (Table 3). The ghost fishing rates achieved by the collapsible trawl mesh pots range from 1733 to 670,866 crabs per year, while the traditional wire mesh pots would catch between 4138 and 222,434 crabs per year, if they were still widely used by
commercial fishers.