Crab Pots

I currently have 14 modified crap pots throughout the marsh on the island. I bait the crab pots every other day and visit the crap pots every day to see if I have any terrapins caught in them. I decided to use this method because terrapins are incidental bycatch of crab pots. A paper published by Andrew Grosse and Dr. John Maerz in 2009 found one ghost crab pot (a crab pot that isn't checked regularly)containing shells from 94 dead terrapins. When terrapins are caught in these pots they are unable to surface to breathe and die, terrapins that tend to be caught in these traps are small juveniles and males. My crab pots are modified to allow the terrapin to surface to breathe as the tide moves up and down in the marsh.

To date I have not caught any terrapins using these modified crap pots. However I have caught some really cool things! Of course I have caught a ton of blue crab, and nope would you know I don't like crab so I let them all go. Hermit crabs are often in the crab pots, the first time I saw one in the pot I was blown away; to date the highest number of hermit crabs in one pot has been 16 :) Fish sometimes are found in the pots as well, I have has some huge flounder in the pots, as well as a variety of fish, mullet, angel fish and even oyster toad fish. I had near seen one before and when I went to take it out of the crab pot I quickly learned they bite and feel like trying to pick up a blob of pudding. I now just shake them out the top of the tunnel, you know for their safety ;)