New state limits on Dungeness pots make some crabby.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

NEWPORT - Oregon's Dungeness crab fleet brought in a record $50 million last year. The fishermen did so by hauling 200,000 baited pots out to sea, throwing them overboard, letting them sink to the bottom and reeling in the bounty later.

But 200,000 crab pots is far too many, agree most of the fishermen that ply Oregon's ocean. Some crabbers drop hundreds of pots from Brookings to Astoria just to stake out territory or gain information about where crabs are moving, and then leave the pots behind for weeks or months without hauling them in.

This morass of "gear," as it's known in the business, creates hazards for boats already navigating treacherous waters; wastes valuable crabs that die in unattended pots that break loose; and dumps litter in the ocean. State officials say 10 percent of pots are lost each year, meaning 20,000 from last year's season alone are still stuck in the Pacific.

Seizing on a rare call from fishermen for more regulation, state officials in June imposed new limits on the fleet, set to take effect in December, when the next season starts.

Crabbers now can either fish with 500, 300 or 200 pots at a time per boat, even if they once fished with 2,000 - a change that could have a significant impact on who catches how much in the 2007 season.

"It's a way to stretch the season out and not cover the whole ocean with crab pots," said Mark Newell, a Newport crabber. Since 80 percent of the crabs are caught in the first month of the season, fishermen hope the changes will slow things down. "You don't want just a few boats fishing 1,000 or 2,000 pots; they're going to squeeze the little guys out," Newell said.

But last week, a small group of fishermen angry with the decision asked the Oregon Court of Appeals to reverse the state's move, calling it an unfair interference with the free market and a violation of federal antitrust laws. The limits give smaller boats the edge that bigger boats once enjoyed, the plaintiffs say.

"What the state is doing - and they're fairly candid about this - is providing a preference for small fishermen over big fishermen. The marketplace allows for there to be a competitive disadvantage," said Gregory Chaimov, one of the attorneys representing the fishermen who filed the lawsuit.

"If the state wanted to limit the amount of crab that could be caught, that's fine. But this is sort of like saying a law firm can hire no more than 10 lawyers."

Chaimov represents several fishermen, a crab buyer and a Washington company that sells pots to Oregon crabbers.

There are 433 permit holders in the fleet. One of them is Jerry Bates, a Newport fisherman who owns three boats. On one of them, his pot limit dropped from 650 to 300.

"I've got $120,000 worth of gear that's going to be sitting in a warehouse. A pot limit would be fair if everybody took an equal cut," Bates said. "Some of us took major whacks; a bunch of them won the lottery. It's a complete fiasco."

Bates argues that each boat should have its limit reduced by a certain percentage of its pots, an idea regulators scrapped because fishermen had been building up their supply of pots since the limits were first discussed five years ago.

Other crabbers were falsely reporting the number of pots they used, Newell said, which is why the state decided to base the restrictions on how many pounds of fish a boat brought in in 2001.

"We're obligated to conduct orderly fisheries," said Patty Burke, manager of the marine resources program at the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife, who said the state hopes to reduce the number of pots used annually by 50,000. "If you're able to tie up some ocean real estate early in the season, you're excluding access."

Bates said the state is overcorrecting. By limiting big boats to fewer pots, the small boats with lesser fuel and insurance costs will make a better living, he said.

"It's like running a pickup truck and a 14-yard dump truck," Bates said. "If they're both given the same amount of gravel to haul, you can see who's going to go broke the fastest."

Other fishermen say the new rules will only make the fleet more efficient. With fewer pots to play with, they'll have to keep gear where the crab are and haul them in regularly.

"If they're good fishermen, they won't have to clutter up the ocean with all these pots," said Gene Law, a Newport crabber. "This will make them more efficient."

Newell is disadvantaged by the new rules, he said, because he just sold a smaller boat for one that can haul more crab. But since the larger boat wasn't as successful in the past as the smaller one, he's limited to 300 pots, instead of the 500 he could easily haul.

"I fell through the crack. There are a lot of inequities about the way this is coming down. As somebody who's been in the business for 20 years, I got screwed," he said.

Still, he added, "Overall, it'll be a better fishery by having fewer pots."

Winston Ross can be reached at [phone] or rgcoast@ oregonfast.net.