I agree with Chip. The tribes were scheduled to take a fixed portion of their quota prior to Rec season, same as always. They take the remainder in the winter. Usually they get their crab quickly (like over the course of a couple days). This year, not so. As I understand it, they experienced relatively poor crabbing, extended their season by a few days, not sure if they actually caught their entire scheduled allotment. That was obviously a really bad sign for those of us who crab in MA-10 because if the Tribes are struggling, and going first, it's not going to be any better for us. That said, unless the Tribes sensed trouble and exceeded their scheduled take (i.e. trying to take 100% of their quota up front instead of scheduled approx. 50%), which I don't think happened, then they just had a normal season but experienced similar challenges to what we are now experiencing. There are some crab around in MA-10. We had some good dinners. Just much slower than usual.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread the tribes consistently "cork" the recs leaving us with fewer legals in the biomass. Okay, if the agreed upon poundage available for harvest is actually there then this is more of an inconvenience making us work harder for our crab. However, if the agreed upon poundage is NOT there the implications are much greater.
Since I work best with simple math......if the total agreed upon poundage available for harvest is 100 pounds the tribes get 50 and State gets 50. But if the actual poundage available is 75 and the tribes by virtue of being first on the water take their agreed upon 50 pounds that leaves only 25 pounds for the State. In that scenario the tribes taking anything over 37.5 pounds eats into the State's 50%. That is why it is so critical to have quality assessments going into negotiations with the tribes rather than simply relying on a 5 year running average which simply does not work when on a serious down trend.
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