Crabbing hobby soured

Peter Beausire bought the £70 pot earlier this year and had started potting since lockdown with a few friends. Over the last two months they had enjoyed catching chancre, spiders and lobsters. He placed the pot on Thursday in Saints Bay but when he went back to check on it the next day, it had gone.

‘I thought an accident may have happened with the rope maybe being caught in a boat propeller and had to be cut, but following a two-hour snorkelling session around the area at low tide on Sunday, the pot was nowhere to be found,’ he said.

There was also no trace of the rope or the buoy. The D-shaped pot was heavy and took one strong person to pull it from the water from a boat, or two swimmers to lift it in the water. The weather at that time was calm. The pot was on a 15m rope, when the tide was less than nine metres, so that would not have dislodged it.

Mr Beausire said he believed there has to have been foul play. As well as the pot, the rope and blue buoy were missing, resulting a total loss of about £100-worth of goods.

‘It is annoying,’ he said.

‘It’s put a dampener on the hobby.’

He posted about the issue online and was surprised to get 40 responses in 24 hours. Many other local potters have been having similar problems.

‘It’s not an uncommon thing,’ he said.

‘That was a surprise. It seems to be an issue for people around the harbour and the south coast.’

He said it had not put him off potting and he had reported the theft to the police.

Saints Bay Moorings Committee member Ian Browning said there were sometimes problems with people using light equipment, which could float away with the tide. But that did not seem the case here.

In the past he said people would lift the pots to steal what was inside, rather than steal the whole pot. But they had seen cases of pots being stolen before.

‘This is theft,’ he said.

‘We will keep an eye out.’

Guernsey Police has been contacted for comment.