Octopus dragging local fishing industry under

The molluscs appear to have returned to local waters in recent years with a vengeance and is devastating local catches of crab and lobster.

Diver and fisherman Richard Keen said the whole fishing industry was in dire straits.

‘Octopus seem here to stay – it is really having a bad effect on the crabbing industry – nobody is catching anything,’ he said.

‘Octopus are eating lobster, crabs and scallops as well.’

He said that one friend had got just three crabs from more than 100 crab pots.

‘Across the industry there is a lack of crabs, and a lot of octopus being found in pots, with no demand for them.’

Local fisherman Dougal Lane said that 90% of the island licensed fishing fleet were crab pot fishermen, so the impact of octopus in the last few years had been huge.

‘We’re now seeing more dead lobsters in pots than live ones,’ he said.

‘And a huge reduction in the hen crabs, which are smaller than the male crabs but which used to make up a large part of the catch. Quite a few small bass fishing boats have stopped, as those stocks have moved north.’

The octopus impact has meant that just one locally-licensed fishing boat longer than 12m is working local waters, and the number of smaller licensed vessels has fallen by more than a third since 2010, from 171 to 116.

Mr Lane said that the industry needed to ‘adapt or die’, as it had always traditionally done.

‘We have fished for what was available locally – you couldn’t catch a crab in our waters before 1963. And 200 years ago there were stories about there being so many octopus on the south coast that the lobsters were coming out onto land to escape them.’

He remembered catching octopus in rock pools as a child until a very harsh winter in 1963.

‘We now have octopus and potentially tuna, either commercially or as a sport if we can sort out licensing,’ he said.

‘We are now selling octopus, but it doesn’t make up for the loss of lobster. It is half the price and on a good day you will only catch a few live ones still in the pots.’

Fishermen are now investigating specialist lobster pots. ‘It would make sense for the States to help fund some of these different sorts of traps so we could see what works here,’ Mr Lane added.

Mr Keen said local fisherman were trying to adapt to the new tentacled catch, but only a couple of local restaurants would buy them.

‘They should be good eating, but as a fisherman I don’t know how to prepare them. One advantage is they can be frozen.’

He added that it was not just Guernsey that was facing such issues.

‘It is across the whole English Channel, France and Jersey too. The price in Brixham for lobster has gone up to from £1 a kilo to £26.’