Hi everyone,
Though I still have another week of research, I’m on the tail end of my journey and I wanted to leave you with some concluding remarks. If daily crab trap numbers continue with a similar pattern, we’re looking at over 500 blue crabs … that’s a lot of crabs, majority of which are male. You could count the number of females on one hand. Without taking a close look at the data (not yet a complete set) my initial speculation and observation from hauling them out and measuring each day is that crab pots without a BRD (the control) catches the largest (in terms of width), and the most number wise in a single pot. Those fitted with the VA BRD and SC BRD seem comparable in terms of number of crabs caught, though the VA BRD takes the (crab)cake in terms of size. Because we don’t yet have a full data set, I can’t say for sure, but as we originally hypothesized that the Virginia BRD will keep out the most turtles while allowing the largest blue crabs and so as not to hurt the crabbing industry, I think this will follow through.
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