Underwater camera system to observe effect of fishing bait on number of caught snow crabs

Red snow crabs are an important resource for the fishing industry. They live at the bottom of the sea, and fish traps are used by fishermen to catch the snow crabs. The fishing period is typically one week, and ideally, the traps should have bait available for the entire duration in order to catch the maximum number of snow crabs. Fishermen in the East Sea of South Korea have utilized two types of fishing bait. The first is bait wrapped in a plastic bag to prevent the snow crabs from eating the bait, and the second is unwrapped bait. This study investigates the tradeoff relationship between the duration longevity of the wrapped bait with the luring capability of the unwrapped bait. To measure each parameter, an underwater camera system was developed to record events inside the trap during the fishing expedition for each instance. The study determined the unwrapped bait to be two times more effective than the wrapped bait, in terms of the number of red snow crabs captured.1