Tag Archives: Conchs
East Hampton fishing for stiffer laws against ‘organized crab crime ring’ stealing bushels of shellfish
Town officials are fishing for even stiffer laws in the war against “organized crab crime rings.” The tougher penalties are needed to turn the tide against “vans full of” out-of-towners bagging “bushels and bushels of shellfish out of Napeague Harbor” and other waterways including Georgica Pond, the town’s attorneys said. “They basically just start taking everything they can grab from the shallows and those two waters: from clams to scallops to conchs, hermit crabs, blue claw crabs. Pretty much grab any size of anything they can in sight,” said Chris Carillo, attorney for the town’s trustees. The night raiders employ a lookout to alert them to Marine Patrol officers and those who are caught don’t carry ID, and because it’s merely a violation, the offenders avoid being fitted for handcuffs, Carillo said. >click to read< 18:41
One man’s tale of lobstering 50 years in Long Island Sound – and simply loving it
John German hunted the delectable red crustacean for five decades. But as he motored his 40-foot boat, the Suzanne Marie, out of Mount Sinai Harbor at dawn Wednesday, he wasn’t looking for lobster. He was fishing for conch, a spiral-shelled mollusk beloved in Asia. The lobsters are nearly gone — and with them, the $100 million a year that they brought to Long Island. German, 71, is one of the last of the Long Island lobstermen, a group that once numbered as many as 700 but now counts only about a dozen members. The rough ride has been blamed on mostly warming waters and what folks call “the die-off,” the death of millions of lobsters in 1999 that lobstermen attribute to a concentration of mosquito insecticide that made its way into the sea. >click to read<07:04
