no 
Fishery Bulletin 112(2-3) 
Such closures also would reduce the number of pots 
abandoned and left out long enough to have their floats 
sunk by marine-fouling organisms. 
Current regulations allow the tie-down of a pot lid 
to be equipped with cotton twine that will decay and 
release the lid after a length of time (ADFG 4 ). How- 
ever, we observed that pots can be flipped upside down 
when lost, rendering this escape mechanism unwork- 
able. If Dungeness crab pots were required to have a 
sidewall release as an escape mechanism, this require- 
ment would greatly reduce this problem. To reveal fur- 
ther means of reducing ghost fishing, more experimen- 
tal work is needed to examine the effectiveness of vari- 
ous release mechanisms for allowing target species and 
other species to escape pots (Matsuoka et al., 2005). 
Conclusions 
Ghost fishing is an entirely wasteful source of mortal- 
ity in aquatic systems. Although lost fishing gear is 
an inevitable consequence of fishing, it can become a 
substantial drain on both fished and nonfished species. 
In Womens Bay, ghost fishing, primarily by crab pots, 
is a source of mortality that may have a strong nega- 
tive effect upon the population by killing 16-37% of 
the population per year. This negative effect could be 
decreased through implementation of measures to re- 
duce the loss rate of crab pots and to ensure that pots 
do not continue to fish long after they are lost. 
Acknowledgments 
We thank S. Persselin, B. Dew, S. Payne, and B. Ste- 
vens for help in tracking and diving on tagged crabs. 
This article was improved through comments by B. 
Knoth, J. Long, F. Morado, R. Foy, and 3 anonymous 
reviewers. 
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