The short answer Dave is no. In Hood Canal especially the tribes declared an "emergency opening" a week or so before the sports opening. They were bringing the crabs into the boat launch for all to see. The reports said that they were bringing in about 40,000 lbs per day. The quota for the whole canal was only 240,000 lbs....Let's see...40 times 6 days = 240,000lbs. And that was after they had already been harvesting for a few months. The non-indian commercial crabbers sell their crab to a buyer who in turns has 24 hours to report the catch by fax or phone. The tribes on the other hand sell to tribal buyer who , I'm told, report atleast 1-2 months later. There has been widespread under reporting and alot of people inside and outside WDFW are well aware of it. They all say the same thing though..we have to accept what they tell us even though we know it is bull**** because they are immune from our jurisdiction. Tribal enforcement is a joke and our legislators are starting to take lots of money from the tribes so there you go. Bad reporting and bad stewardship of the resource. No wonder there are not so many crabs in Puget Sound at this time.

The tribes went back in the water on Oct 1. They made a pact with the non indian commercials to only use 50 pots per boat instead of the approved 100. That worked for a week or so until the tribes decided they weren't getting enough crab so they went back to the 100 pots per boat.....Not sure if they even informed their commercial partners about it .

So my question to you Dave is this: How can this state manage the crab if they do not have an accurate idea of how many crab there are and who is harvesting what?