BY E-CHING LEE 



a dna Emme is in her 80s, and she 

 can still spot a strange fish. 



"I thought I had caught a fish, but 

 when I got it to the sand, it was something 

 else," Emme recalls of her March catch in 

 Montgomery Slough. She found a "funny crab" 

 on her fishing line. 



"It was pink," says the Oak Island resident 

 with a laugh. Emme had reeled in a female blue 

 crab with a fluorescent pink plastic tag. 



"It looks like an ID bracelet," says Karen 

 Freeze, Emme's daughter, describing the tag. 



This crab is part of a project led by Elaine 

 Logothetis, a Wilmington-based biologist. 

 Logothetis tags mature female blue crabs in the 

 ocean to track their movements and determine 



their migratory patterns. The study is supported 

 by North Carolina Sea Grant's Blue Crab 

 Research Program — which is funded by the 

 N.C. General Assembly and administered by 

 North Carolina Sea Grant. 



And aided by bright pink tags. 



"We weren't crabbing. We were fishing," 

 Freeze says. "We had never seen anything like 

 that." 



"As much as we like to eat crab, we were 

 out fishing that day," she adds. So mother and 

 daughter released the crab and mailed the tag to 

 Logothetis. 



Each tag lists a phone number or a 

 mailing address to report the find, as well as 

 the information to provide — including capture 

 date, location and fishing method. 



The idea for the crab tagging project 

 came from an earlier research project. In 

 2002 and 2003, Logothetis and fisher David 

 Beresoff received a grant from the N.C. Fishery 

 Resource Grant Program — also funded by the 

 N.C. General Assembly and administered by 

 Sea Grant — to study the feasibility of a winter 

 conch fishery. 



They used wooden conch and wire crab 

 pots to catch whelks in the ocean. To their 

 surprise, the traps yielded an unexpected harvest. 



"We caught an awful lot of crabs," says 

 Beresoff, who has worked with Logothetis on 

 several projects prior to his appointment to the 

 N.C. Marine Fisheries Commission earlier this 

 year. 



"We were actually making more money 

 on the crabs," Logothetis recalls. Most of the 

 crabs were mature females that brought in more 

 income than the whelks. 



The sheer numbers of crabs in the ocean 

 during the winter months intrigued Logothetis. 

 Typically, North Carolina's main fishery for 

 adult blue crabs is in the state's sounds and 

 estuaries and occurs in spring and summer. 



She wondered what happened to the 

 ocean-dwelling crabs. "That's the mystery," 

 Logothetis says. "Where would they be if they 

 weren't harvested in the ocean?" 



The crabs do not stay in the ocean 

 permanently. After several years of ocean 



Continued 



TOP: Great-grandmother Edna Emme enjoys time 

 with her family. From left: daughter Karen Freeze 

 holding great-granddaughter Faith Nicole Davis, 

 Edna Emme, and granddaughter Janice Davis. 

 LEFT: Only female crabs reach terminal molt, a 

 stage where they do not shed their shells again. 

 BOTTOM: David Beresoff is a Brunswick County 

 commercial fisher and fish market owner. 



Coastwatch I Holiday 2006 I www.ncseagrant.org 19 



