Stimulus Money Goes to Retrieve Old Crab Pots From Ocean Bed

NEWPORT, Ore. -- Commercial fishermen struggling from catch restrictions and high fuel prices will get part of a $700,000 federal stimulus grant to retrieve lost crab pots now littering the ocean bottom, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Friday

The money will be used to hire 48 people -- including 31 fishermen -- and to charter 10 vessels to retrieve an estimated 4,000 derelict crab pots, which pose a hazard to whales, seal lions and fishing boats, Jane Lubchenco said.

Lubchenco, a former Oregon State University marine ecologist, announced the project while standing on the dock of the Pacific Shrimp processing plant on the Newport waterfront.

Fishermen regularly bring back pots they've found snagged with other gear, but the pots expected to be retrieved over the next two years is unprecedented, said Nick Furman, director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission.

Each year, 10 percent of the thousands of pots set out by Oregon's fleet of some 400 crab boats are lost in storms, or because their buoys where cut off by a passing boat, Furman said. The pots cost $150 apiece.

Work starts late this summer and continues into the fall, after the crab season is closed for the year. The project continues again next year.

Side-scan sonar will be used to find old buried pots at the mouth of the Columbia River. Fishing boats will then drag a chain rigged with grappling hooks along the ocean floor to snag the pots and raise them to the surface, said Cyreis Schmitt, marine resources program manger for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, who applied for the grant.

Elsewhere on the coast, fishermen will also snag pots, but without the help of sonar.

"We certainly don't want to leave the gear out there," said crab fisherman Bob Spelbrink of Newport. "This project will really help."

Ed Bowles, fisheries chief for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, said he hoped the fishing industry would "step up" and take over the program after the stimulus funding runs out next year.