A federal stimulus grant will help Oregon fishermen retrieve lost crab pots.
The $700,000 grant will be used to hire fishermen to recover about 4,000 crab pots lost off the Oregon coast – the largest effort ever to retrieve crab pots, which pose a significant danger to whales and other sea life.
Every year, 10 percent of the 150,000 pots Oregon crabbers put out are lost, said Cyreis Schmitt, marine policy project leader at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, who wrote the proposal that won the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration grant.
That amounts to 15,000 newly lost pots every year — and a menacing threat. In the past five years, two whales have washed up dead on the Oregon Coast, entangled in crab pots and lines, said Schmitt.
Read the full story at The Associated Press.
