Diver wants to encourage shy crawfish out of their shells

[Mr T.]

DIVER WANTS TO ENCOURAGE SHY CRAWFISH OUT OF THEIR SHELL

Plymouth Evening Herald
12:00 - 10 December 2005

A Plymouth diver has launched a double campaign to preserve marine stocks for future generations to enjoy.

Howard Jones from Elburton is bidding to hatch out baby crawfish and release them into the wild.

He is also backing plans for a No Take Zone around the Mewstone off Wembury, where marine creatures of all kinds can breed and thrive unmolested.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, crawfish - a tasty relation of the lobster which can grow to 15 pounds - were abundant in South West waters.

Unlike lobsters, they have no large claws to defend themselves, and live on flat underwater rocks rather than hiding away in holes.

They were easy prey for teams of commercial divers, who landed up to 3,000 a week by simply diving down and picking them off the rocks. Most were promptly exported to France and Spain in refrigerated trucks.

Eventually, stocks were wiped out, with divers having to venture deeper and deeper to find them, until they began contracting the deadly "bends".

Now crawfish are so rare that none has been landed at Plymouth fish market for three years.

Lobsters are successfully bred in hatcheries, including one at Padstow, but no-one has ever successfully raised crawfish in captivity.

Howard has managed to obtain four wild "berried" crawfish - females carrying fertilised eggs - from as far afield as the Scillies, and after seven months keeping them in holding tanks hopes to see the babies hatch soon at his converted warehouse beside the Cattewater.

He plans to hold the young crawfish in separate tanks and feed them different foods to find out how they can be raised.

His idea then is to release them into the wild to repopulate local waters.

The scheme has won the backing of famed Plymouth restaurateurs the Tanner brothers, who once cooked a crawfish on a TV show, not realising how endangered they were.

The Tanners say they are committed to using only seafoods from sustainable stocks.

Crawfish produce up to 500,000 eggs, but few survive because they have to undergo 10 larval stages and spend many months drifting the ocean as helpless plankton.

Howard also hopes to see a Marine Protected Area soon off Wembury after months of consultations with commercial fishermen, divers and anglers.

The area, including The Mewstone, is offshore from land which used to be part of the HMS Cambridge gunnery school, but is now owned by the National Trust.

The idea is to have a 2.5 square kilometre area of seabed where no fishing of any kind takes place.

Divers would be allowed in on a "no touch" basis, and could monitor the success of the scheme.

But they would not be allowed in a second zone ringing the no-take zone where fishing would be allowed.

Experiences in countries such as New Zealand show that marine life populations boom within the no-take zones, with suplus stocks expanding into the fishing zones where they can be sustainably harvested.

Howard hopes that the Government's new Marine Bill will give the powers to make the voluntary zones compulsory, but says their greatest protection is the support of local people.

He added: "I have three children under seven, and I want to make sure that when they grow up, fish stocks are there for them to enjoy."

Howard, who would welcome sponsorship for his crawfish scheme, can be contacted at howard@freeology.co.uk, or visit his website, www.project180.co.uk .