How to Harvest Shellfish

Clams
The most common form of harvest for clams is hand digging or picking. The common tool is an ordinary short-tined garden rake. Butter clams lay lower under the surface and a garden-type, long-handled potato fork is used to harvest the species. Razor clams are dug individually with a short-handled, thin bladed shovel. Harvesters are encouraged to fill in holes to reduce predation on exposed juvenile clams.

Harvesting clams that are undersized is prohibited. The size limit for clams must be measured in a straight line through the greatest breadth of the shell. Minimum harvestable sizes are as follows: littlenecks 38 millimetres, butter 63 millimetres, Manila 38 millimetres and razor 90 millimetres.

Crabs
Crabs are most commonly harvested using traps or ring nets. They are occasionally collected from shallow waters by hand, using SCUBA or dip nets. Sport and Native fishermen may use any of these methods. Commercial fishermen generally use traps or ring nets. Traps are frames covered with webbing to form an enclosure. Crabs gain access to the enclosure through a tunnel or door. The doors or tunnels may be triggered to form a one-way entrance. Ring nets are simply a circular frame holding a bag of web. Crabs are captured in the web bag when they cross the edge of the frame and the frame is lifted. Traps and ring nets are baited with fish, squid, clams, offal or fish food pellets. Crabs enter the trap or ring net to feed on the bait or to investigate other crab activity. Ring nets are fished on single lines. Traps may be fished singly or on long lines with multiple traps.

Size limits are used as the primary conservation measure in the dungeness crab fishery. In British Columbia, the size limit is 165 millimetres across the maximum breadth of the carapace. The size limit is designed to protect sexually mature male dungeness crab for at least one year prior to harvest. Female dungeness crabs rarely exceed the 165 millimetre size limit, but are further protected from the commercial fishery through a sex restriction that limits the harvest to male crab only. Undersized and female crabs must be returned to the water, immediately upon capture. Legal-sized female crabs may be retained by recreational and First Nations fishers. The protection of females and a significant portion of the mature males in dungeness crab populations ensures that harvestable stocks will be sustained.

Geoduck
Geoducks are harvested commercially by divers using high pressure water delivered through a nozzle (known as a "stinger"), which loosens the surface around the clam and allows the diver to lift the clams out live. Geoducks are quickly shipped to processing plants where they are packed and usually delivered live to Asian markets. The recreational fishery is limited to hand-digging methods. Commercial gear (stingers) cannot be used for sport harvest.

Octopus
The octopus fishery is located primarily in south coast areas with the majority of octopuses landed by divers from the areas along the east coast of Vancouver Island from Port Hardy to Sooke. Reported landings of octopuses by divers from areas on the west coast of Vancouver Island have been relatively minor. Octopuses are primarily harvested by dive-fishing methods, however there is a limited by-catch in some trap and trawl fisheries. No hooks, gaffs, spears or sharp pointed instruments are permitted when harvesting octopuses. Bleach or other chemicals are also strictly prohibited.

Prawn
Commercial traps come in a variety of different designs including double ring traps, wire mesh traps, bucket traps and box traps. All must meet minimum mesh size and maximum volume size requirements. Multiple traps are strung on long, weighted lines between two floats. Sport fishing traps are as varied in design as commercial traps. Sport fishers are allowed to use a small mesh size for their traps. Each sport fisher can fish four traps, either on a string between two floats or as a single trap on a line. Bottom type, depth, bait and soak time are important for recreational prawn fishing.

Sea Cucumber
Sea cucumbers are harvested commercially by divers who remove the animals by hand. Marketable products include frozen muscle strips and dried skins. Skins are semi-dried in BC and the US prior to export to Asia. Final destinations for these products include Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China and Korea, as well as Canada and the US. The commercial sea cucumber fishery occurs in four geographic areas: West Coast Vancouver Island, East Coast Vancouver Island, the Central Coast District and Prince Rupert District. Under the current management regime, the fishery generally lasts three weeks and most often occurs during October, when product quality is higher and weather conditions are still conducive to fish. Individual quotas allow fishermen to select optimum times in which to harvest without fear of competition from other licence holders. While some areas may be more desirable to fish and those quotas harvested early, openings in most areas span the entire three week period.

Sea Urchin
Three sea urchin species have been fished in BC waters; red and green sea urchins are fished commercially and purple sea urchins were fished under scientific permit from 1990 to 1992. Fisheries and Oceans Canada is currently reviewing the potential for a purple sea urchin fishery. Commercially-harvested red sea urchins are removed from the ocean floor by divers using short aluminum rakes. Red sea urchins are harvested for their roe (gonad). Packer vessels and trucks deliver the product fresh to processing plants. The gonad is extracted and processed in BC and marketed almost exclusively to Japan, where it is sold as "uni". A smaller market for red sea urchins is developing in other Asian countries and in North America. The yield of roe from a whole animal ranges from five to 15 percent of total body weight. Red sea urchins are of continuing importance to coastal First Nations who harvest them for food, social and ceremonial purposes. The extent of recreational harvest of red sea urchins is undocumented, but considered to be minimal.

Scallop
Two species of scallops are harvested in BC waters: spiny (to 80 millimetres) and pink (to 71 millimetres). Scallops are harvested in inshore waters by divers and by small trawls (drags). The size of the trawl net is limited to a maximum width of two metres. A minimum size limit of 55 millimetres, measured through the longest diameter of the shell perpendicular to the hinge, is in effect for both species of commercially-harvested scallops.

Shrimp
There are seven shrimp species harvested by trawl in BC (and fisheries vary in complexity from single to multi-species) for a variety of markets including machine-peeled, hand-peeled, frozen-at-sea, fresh and live shrimp. The majority of landings are a mix of pink shrimp and sidestripe shrimp. Pink and sidestripe shrimp do not easily enter baited traps, but humpback and dock (coonstripe) shrimp are caught commercially by both trawl and trap. The Pacific Region shrimp trawl fishery takes place all along the British Columbia coastline in a number of protected inshore areas and large offshore grounds on soft bottoms of mud or sand in average depths of 100 to 150 metres.

Squid
Opal squid are largely taken by seine. hook-and-line and side-catcher or frame nets are also used, but to a lesser extent. Squid landed in British Columbia are mainly used as bait in the crab, sablefish and halibut fisheries. There is interest in marketing squid as a food product in BC, but the large California squid fishery produces a low-priced product, making it difficult for B. squid fishers to compete in this market.