Warming seas and overfishing blamed for sharp drop in crab landings in Yorkshire

The phenomenon is being seen around the UK but is having a major impact on ports like Bridlington and Whitby where fishermen now rely on just two species of shellfish for their livelihoods – crab and lobster.

The North Eastern Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (Ifca), which manages fisheries up to six miles out at sea from Lincolnshire to Tyneside, says catches of crab have fallen 25 per cent in the past three years, while lobster was down 20 per cent.

In 2022 651 tonnes of crab were caught – last year that figure dropped to 489 tonnes.

Lobster was also down over the same period from 514 tonnes to 457 tonnes, but Ifca says this can be explained a fall in the overall number of pots hauled in peak potting season in July 2024 (2.55 million pots compared to 3.04 million in 2023) and say overall numbers are holding up well.

Most shellfish boats work beyond the six-mile limit, outside the jurisdiction of Ifca, so the figures only represent a fraction of the overall fishing effort.

David McCandless, Ifca's chief executive said inshore fisheries and conservation areas around the country had seen a "significant decline" in landings of edible brown crab.

The large nomadic "vivier" fleet, which fishes on Dogger Bank, 80 miles off Bridlington, could play a part. The vessels, which are mainly Scottish registered, carry aerated saltwater tanks to keep shellfish alive, and “fish until they fill the tanks”.

Recorded single landings have been as high as 30 or 40 tonnes, and average around nine to 10 – far higher than that of inshore fishery boats.

Research has shown that brown crabs move long distances, and go offshore into deeper water to spawn, so the offshore crab fishery may well be impacting the inshore fishery, said Mr McCandless, although this was still a theory.

Another theory is that the warming of the seas is affecting phytoplankton, which forms a significant part of the base of the marine food web and is an important food source for various planktonic organisms, including crab larvae.

Ifca already has a minimum legal size for edible crabs of 140mm carapace width and next year is introducing a new bylaw which will restrict inshore boats to 1,000 pots each.

However this won’t apply over six miles out to sea, and Mr McCandless says proving where a boat has made its catch can be tricky.

James Cole, chairman of Whitby's Commercial Fishing Association, said there was “nowhere near” the size of crab catches they were making just a few years ago: “There’s maybe 10 per cent of what we were seeing five, seven, eight years ago,” he said. “We are seeing a range of crabs of all sizes, but no great numbers.

"I think it’s a combination of climate change, overfishing and possibly plankton and water temperatures.”

He said there was nothing to stop a boat working 5,000 or 10,000 pots outside the six-mile limit.

"Ifca should have jurisdiction out to 12 miles and have a sensible management on pots,” he added.

He said the size that a crab could be caught should be unified throughout the country; a Cromer crab has a minimum legal shell span of 115mm.

"I’m hugely worried,” he said. “I’ve been fishing 40-odd years. I came out of white fishing – there were 30 different species of fish – then we went to nephrops (langoustine). Now we are down to two species of shellfish.

"If one falls we are reliant on the other – if they both fall we are out of business.”