Thanks for the insight, Ron. I will attend the meeting, and probably join the PSA so I can be part of the solution, instead of just biyatching about the problem.

Crabbing was what brought me into Puget Sound boating, and it saddens me to see that this wonderful wildlife activity is being mutated into something much more angst-ridden and troublesome than it needs to be. I remember the first time I saw a commercial crab boat come in loaded with literally thousands of crab, at a time when the season was closed for recreational harvest because of quotas. It made me think, WTF is going on here, why can these two guys go get a couple thousand crabs and sell them for a buck or two a pound, but I can't harvest 6 for dinner?
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I would have brought the state a bunch more revenue by catching those crab as a sport fisher, than those two yokels brought in as commercial crabbers. They certainly didn't look like they were enjoying any financial success given the deplorable state of their boat, so who is benefitting? The crabber isn't getting rich, I don't get to crab so my boat sits in storage and I'm not buying gas/gear/etc., my kids are playing Nintendo instead of being out on the water getting some fresh air and exercise, I have to pay $5/pound to feed my out-of-town guests 5-day-old whole crab, so who wins?

I still think vouchers could work -- every time I go harvest some crabs, I sign and mail in a voucher that tells WDFW how many crab I harvested. There is obviously an element of trust required to make this work, but there is an equivalent, or maybe greater, level of trust in the WDFW checker asking me at the ramp if I was crabbing; it is up to me to tell the truth or not. I can beat the aerial survey by tying off 4 traps with 1 buoy. I can put some bogus name on the buoy in case it gets spot-checked. Poaching salmon is even easier -- I just wrap the fish up in plastic bags and throw throw them in the bilge when I retrieve, and tell the WDFW checker I struck out that day.

My point is that compliance with catch limits has to be on the honor system at some level. I believe that of all the casual or ignorant poachers that have time to think about or figure out what they have done and have the opportunity to do the right thing (send in a voucher), most will eventually do the right thing. Those that still don't do the right thing because they are just criminals will poach regardless of the compliance system, barring trained salmon-smelling dogs at every ramp.

The wildcard in this formula is when the compliance system becomes highly burdensome to everyone. At this point, some percentage of straight-arrow "good guys" become casual poachers, because they are pissed off about the burdens caused by the compliance system. They may start to high-grade halibut, they may "forget" to write in that blackmouth they caught, etc. I would argue that choking down the crab season to 3 months per year while simultaneously allowing a few commercial crabbers to harvest tons of crab, is highly burdensome to everyone.