Todd, no argument from me. Certainly the appropriate authority for reporting this crime is the Island County Sheriff's Department. And the difficulty they will have is jurisdiction in accessing tribal land to obtain any evidence. Hence the Lacey Act and Federal jurisdiction comment.

Frankly, I am very tired as a recreational crabber of being a member of a group which is characterised by the commercial fishers (and one Commissioner) as scofflaws; a perception reinforced by certain members of WDFW LE when quoting recreational violation rates to the press when those rates (if supportable) are really violations by targeted (that is, not random) recreational crabbers. The State Auditor's Office in its written report on its audit of the WDFW Puget Sound Dungeness crab management program made note of the purported recreational violation rate and clearly indicated that it could not be applied to the recreational fishery as a whole as LE's efforts were not random.

Recent data pulled together and released informally by WDFW LE shows numerous serious commercial violations (both tribal and non-tribal fishers as well as buyers) involving huge poundages of crab. So where is the coverage on those violations (rhetorical)?

Bushbear, given how strongly the tribes have played on their sovereignty it would seem that a good case could be made that the Lacey Act does apply if the theft and subsequent sale crossed the reservation boundary. Doesn't take too many crab to reach a value of $250.00 especially if it is the ultimate retail value (and crab being sold through Vancouver and shipped live to Asia for $42.00 a crab retail as has been reported).

And, in summary, we finished up another great summer crab season this week-end in Area 8-2. Large numbers of females and just short males in the pots and just enough legals to yield limits or near limits especially from deeper water. Looking forward to the winter season to see how the larger males may redistribute themselves.