I called Jay Johnson today to get to the bottom of his news story. I identified myself to the KIRO news desk and was immediately connected to Jay's cell phone (didn't have to dial it)...that was surprising. He was out somewhere getting ready for a live interview but took about 15 minutes to discuss his story with me.

Right away I told him his story was not accurate. He bristled at that accusation and went on to defend it as taken from an "official" WDFW news release. I told him that just because it was an official WDFW news release didn't mean it was the truth and nothing but the truth. I told him that he should have checked his information with other sources and that he should go back and do some homework.

As I mentioned the names of WDFW officials he seemed to be "friends" with most of them. So it may not be an accident that the spin doctors at WDFW leaked the news release to him. In any case, the premise of the story was that the recreational sector had overharvested by a factor of double taking share away from the commercial crabbers. In other words the sports crabbers are the problem and they are the ones who need to be reigned in. WOW I said. No kidding? That is what you think the problem is?

I went on to explain that the sports crabber population has doubled in census in the last 9 years but our quota or piece of the pie has stayed the same. We did not catch twice as many crab as we were allowed to with our abbreviated seasons in 2004. There were just twice as many crabbers out trying to catch the same amount of crab we were looking for in 1996. Back then the sports sector was not able to harvest our 16% in Puget Sound so the allocation remained 36% commercial and 16% sport with the other 50% going to the tribes. Include the crab harvested off the coast outrside of Puget Sound and the sports percentage of the catch drops to a mere 3%.

He echoed another WDFW mantra and that is they want to know what it is we think would be fair. I told him that was simple. We want a 50% share of the non-tribal allocation or 25% share instead of the 16% we have now. Even at that our contribution to the economy is huge by comaprison to the 181 commercial crabber's contribution.

The sports sector does not want to stop commercial crabbing we just want a fair allocation. I suspect that many other news outlets will be given a chance to report on the "whole story".