The Crabs
Only male king crabs measuring 6.5 inches and snow crabs measuring 4 inches from spine to spine are kept; females and juveniles are tossed back into the sea.
In some fisheries, as many as six crabs are discarded for each legal male kept. Such handling of the discarded crabs can result in distress, injury and possibly death to the crabs.
As they try to get to the bait, crabs often injure each other. A seriously injured crab serves as bait to the others, who will eat it. In fact, "ghost pots" — pots that are lost at sea — will continue to attract and kill crabs through this "self-baiting" process.
Ghost pots pose a serious problem; in some places they are as dense as 50 per square kilometer, and may catch and kill as many crabs in a year as the fishery does.
Sometimes crabs die during the fishing process, something fishermen try to avoid since they spoil before they can be sold. However, if the crabs are kept in a tank of circulating seawater, as most are, a few dead crabs won't harm the others.
Boats must, as a matter of course, unload hundreds of pounds of "deadloss" after a trip to the fishing grounds.