Catches have fallen off steadily in recent years. And although many scientists and government regulators place most of the blame on overfishing, he blames the rockfish. The solution, he added, is to raise the number of rockfish each waterman is allowed to catch each year. There's bundles of fish out there. Before the study by van Montfrans, which focused on the grass beds where rockfish are most likely to encounter bite-size crabs, research had shown that the fish chose crabs only when other options weren't available.
Skeptics wonder whether watermen are peddling a fish story about the rockfish and the crab.
It helps them argue against new restrictions on crabbing. And it gives them ammunition to argue for higher catch limits on rockfish, meaning more profit for watermen. Rockfish do eat crabs. But he said the biggest threat to crabs is hungry humans. I remember 15 years ago when we didn't have any rockfish.