@Larry B,
or if one lived on the waterfront and kept a few limits in a commercial trap
under their tie up float, like happened in a few places, this was also in court as in possession of more than one limit of crab.
My father in law used to clean them and keep them on ice for 24 hours. so they were not cooked whole or right away, but were processed.... but he did have to keep the shells. I don't know if that would hold up in court today.
From my reading "fresh" crab in the frig or on ice is not frozen nor processed and, therefore, counts as part of your possession limit. Once at a normal residence I doubt that there is a requirement for retention of the shells but that is an interesting point and potential argument for one definition (see below).
My point in bringing this up is that the language for "Possession Limit" is different for shellfish than it is for finfish. It was suggested to me by the WDFW LEO that that may well be a carryover from pre-merger days (Dept of Fisheries and Dept of Game). Absent some strong justification for having two different definitions my position is that there should be just one and it should be the "in the field or in transit" version. Alternately, they need to create a finfish definition and a shellfish definition.
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