Crab poaching can cause disappearance of species
VLADIVOSTOK, November 11 -- Russia?s Primorye region proposed to the State Duma to impose a five-year ban on crab fishing in Far Eastern seas in order to stop poaching and restore the reserves of the species, the press service of the regional administration told Tass on Friday.
"Crab poaching in the Russian territorial waters has reached an enormous scope. It is the reason why the reserves of Kamchatka crab are assessed as catastrophic," Governor Sergei Darkin said in the proposal to the lower house of the Russian parliament.
"The problem can be resolved only by introducing a complete and most likely five-year ban on crab fishing, first and foremost, in Russian territorial waters in the Far East until its reserves are restored", according to the proposal.
Crab poaching considerably exceeds legal fishing in the area. In ten months of the year coast guards detained 126 Russian and 52 foreign vessels in Primorye area and most of them were poaching crab. 149 thousand live crab were confiscated and returned to the sea. The Association of Primorye fisheries estimated the annual crab poaching detriment at close to 700 million US dollars.
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