Sunken crab pots may be death traps

Dozens left on river bottoms could keep catching and killing marine life

Friday, Oct. 10, 2008

The Maryland-based Institute of Maritime History in its work to chart submerged wrecks has found many derelict crab traps and one lost pound net at the bottom of the Potomac River.

David Howe, its secretary, told the St. Mary's County commissioners of the death traps for aquatic life in two letters, but the institute can't do any retrieval work. It can only supply the locations. The nonprofit group is paid by the Maryland Historic Trust to find shipwreck locations.

"The traps are death traps for crabs and fish," Howe said Monday. There was a batch of 20 such traps in a 500-foot square area in the St. Mary's River. "The problem I have is we're working under a grant for the Maryland Historic Trust looking for shipwrecks. We cannot take the time to stop and recover [the pots]. Recovering the traps is going to take a lot of time," he said. He estimated that recovery work in the Potomac would take at least a year.

Once located by sonar, the crab traps can be pulled up by divers. "They're not heavy, but they're dug in and they're fragile," he said.

County government inquired to see if funds from the state derelict boat removal program could be used to salvage the old traps, but Commission President Francis Jack Russell (D) did not support that. Russell is a former waterman and said the solution needs to come from within the crabbing industry.

"I've thought about this. You'll never get them all up," he said. What watermen need to do is install a biodegradable panel on the side of each crab pot, so if it's lost, it'll fall off after a short amount of time, leaving an escape out of the trap. "It's a little more work for the watermen" but not an expensive task, he said.

"Watermen are very ingenious about these types of things," he said.

When Russell was crabbing, he said, he would lose between 20 and 25 percent of his pots during a season, from storms or boaters dislodging them.

Once continuously submerged, the pots are designed to last a year, Russell said.

And if there is rotting organic material in the pot, it'll only attract more scavenging crabs into it. When they die, other crabs come in to eat those.

"And yes we do waste a lot of crabs like that," Russell said. "The help for this is within the industry itself. It's a problem we've known about for years."

The Institute of Maritime History found four previously unknown wrecks last year in the Potomac from Cobb Island to Piney Point. Work is continuing down to Point Lookout this year, but so far, no unknown wrecks have been located. Two known wrecks were confirmed so far this year.

Even though large items can be detected by sonar, it's still a task for the divers to physically find them because visibility is about 6 inches year round, Howe said.

The USS Tulip exploded on Nov. 11, 1864, in the Potomac off Piney Point, killing 49 people. "She was located by sport divers," Howe said, who brought up artifacts including a human skull.

The institute keeps wreck locations secret from the public so they are not scavenged by divers.

On Dec. 20, 1986, a barge exploded off Steuart Petroleum Company in Piney Point, killing four people. The submerged wreckage was located.

Many charted wrecks aren't in the locations they're expected to be in because of bad reporting, and there are a lot of ships out there. "Nobody has a complete list," Howe said.

jbabcock@somdnews.com