Lots of speculation as to the underlying reason or reasons but it was clearly multiple years of poor spawning success.

Toss on top of that the Nisqually tribe over fishing its agreed upon quota followed by responding to criticism by simply not agreeing to a quota and the population of prospective spawners dwindled.

The hope is that improving numbers in MA 11 will result in larvae washing into MA 13.

But have those responsible learned a lesson? $$$$$

I think the short answer is "No". The longer answer includes many colorful adjectives.

My speculation would be that any reduction of the daily limit with the goal of a meaningful extension of season is a Pipe Dream.

How many crabbers in MA 11 are harvesting more than three per day right now on a two day a week season?

Two a day?

One a day?

It was interesting in salmon and steelhead management is that the limit in most cases is really meaningless. Especially in freshwater, limits are not the norm. Folks often ask for increased limits so that the share can be achieved but the data (back when I was there) showed so few achieving the low limit that raising it didn't add many fish.

I do know from experience that raining the Kenai sockeye limit added to my personal catch but I don't know if the actual number of anglers made a significant dent in the run.

I also find that my personal limit is often way below the legal bag. I take basically what I want to eat fresh. Exceptions, certainly, for those Kenai sockeye where we had access to flash freezing. On crab, for example, we will probably consume one or two. That would be a fine haul.

I remember, quite a while ago, that WDG wardens caught some folks that had hundreds of rainbow legals in the freezer. Maybe they ate them all, or planned to, but that's a whole lot of fish.

I would hope (probably forlorn) that somebody would do an extensive and in-depth study of the psychology of limits as applied to hunting and fishing. What drives personal harvest? Do we stop at some personal line or push to or beyond the legal limit?

I guess crab can be frozen, but we only eat it fresh. So a couple of Dungeness crab is plenty. I do freeze salmon since I bought a vacuum pack machine. It hasn't occurred to me to think if I'd rather catch them all in one day with a larger limit, or stretch out the fishing over 2 or 3 days. Trout and steelhead limits are essentially meaningless to me because that's primarily CNR fishing. I keep a hatchery summer steelhead once in a while, and I haven't kept a trout in over a decade.

It's really funny, as I have mentioned before, is that I don't often go for a multi-individual limit I think I would be really into a couple of deer. I think even with a fish I like to eat, that a "fresh" catch limit is about all I want.

It will be interesting of C&R limits are developed; I have read of a few proposals in very popular trout fisheries. You've been around long enough, Salmo, to know that old WDG limits were daily catch, regardless of what you did with the fish. I knew wardens who would cite a guy if he had released two steelhead and kept fishing.

Actually crab does pretty good frozen, if eaten within a month or 2. Tried it once and left them frozen too long and didn't care for the texture. Never as good as fresh cooked though. This season had few xtras we couldn't eat up before they spoiled, so I tried freezing again rather than wasting. Separated legs and claws from the body wrapped in plastic wrap to dull the pokies and then vaccum packed. Separated body meat and made crab cakes then froze them. Took out some legs last week to put on a salad and was surprised how good it was. The crab cakes are excellent! Nice to spread out consumption, because I get grossed out eating it day after day at peak harvest. I read that all commercial whole crab are all frozen now, to get more time out of them, even during there peak harvest, unless bought processed as meat?

I do know that the frozen sockeye we got lasted about 9 months at pretty good quality before tailing off. Processing is now much better, but I don't have a flash freezer or vacuum packing.