English Bay Crabbing...Feb. 18

flyfishinwoman said:

I'm surprised that anyone still eats crabs taken from English Bay. I stopped doing that 25 years ago when I found the crabs that I caught off Jericho pier were not very appetizing.

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I have never had them off that side (or maybe once a few years back), but the ones we had last weekend off of ~3rd beach were very good. I have pulled crabs up all over the place from the southern Gulf Islands way up into Johnstone Strait and anyway you look at them......they are bottom 'crap' eaters. I would tend to say that some of the ones from up North may certainly be better due to colder and cleaner water, but we have pulled them up in many an area where I know that people are dumping their holding tanks as well :shock: . Ya....I will agree the water quality is certainly not as good in English Bay as in other areas, but heck......I have to admit I eat a McDonalds burger once every 3-4 months as well, and I am not afraid to have a "couple" of beers on occasion. Having a feast once in a while from our local waters I am sure is not going to kill me, but you may be correct.....in a side by side taste test there may be a difference in flavour from crabs caught here vs. lets say......Sonora Island. Never the less........we ate well on Saturday evening and a nice garlic herbed butter will make anything taste good.

As I said in another thread......we also do a lot of prawning up in Howe Sound between Anvil and Gambier Islands.....not too far from Port Mellon and Wood Fibre and I would never hesitate eating prawns from those waters either.

Maybe I have a strong stomach?? Not sure.......as I do hate tequila!! :wink:

From what I have learned in invertabrate zoology 2?? crab although they live in s__t have clean meat when compared with others like bi-valves. I would not worry to much about biologic contamination of crab. Also they don't live that long; two years to maturity and how long after that are they eaten? So contamimation from organic mercury and other inorganic would not be to bad - don't eat em' every day. However, I disagree with putting a prawn trap near Port Melone there is a 3m layer of dioxin laden sludge on the bottom of Howe Sound. Eating the odd prawn would not kill yeah, but making a habit of it???
I always thought, bottom fish were not allowed to be retianed in Howe Sound - at least from Gambier in. I would not eat them from around there because they live so long - dioxin and organic mecuery (organic mecury is realesed from decaing trees, a lot of booming ground there, many of the large lake maded from damming river have fish you should not eat because of the mecury - like Wilistion lake north of PG).
English Bay is a large producer for the comercial fishery. There is a good chance if you have crab locally it came from somewhere between English Bay and Boundery Bay.
I know that for mud crab in Australia that the crab do taste better or at least sweeter when they are not molting, there is more meat too. Crab come into shallow water to molt, so it could be the they did not taste as good because they had just molted.
As for why the Tea House is a good crabbing spot, it is where one of the storm drain overflows spills into the ocean when ever it rains heavily. Oh, and all that constuciton digging the road up is to put in a two pipe sewere system in... right now we have one for sewage and rain water. So when it over flows from heavy rain both go into English Bay. There are four other out fall just as productive for crab... mmm... Crab. I still eat them from Engish Bay.
Have fun, Jason