Kianna Zivny reaches into the water at the Discovery Marina in Campbell River and pulls out a white bucket with a funnel and net attached.
It might not appear to be high-tech equipment, but she is checking a sampling tool called a light trap designed to attract larval Dungeness crabs. She pours its contents into a small tub filled with ocean water to search for any larval crabs but finds none. "It's still early in the season," she said.
At night, a stripe of LED lights illuminates the submerged trap to attract crab larvae. The monitoring station is part of a larger data collection project called Sentinels of Change, led by the Hakai Institute, involving communities, scientists and organizations along British Columbia's coast. The goal is to fill biological data gaps on the economically and culturally significant Dungeness crab species by monitoring their early development stages in the Salish Sea. As one of the most important seafood industries along the west coast of North America, this monitoring aims to help predict crab populations and prevent crises.
Volunteers like Zivny check the trap about twice a week in the mornings. They record all the data and then return the trap, along with its creatures, back into the ocean.
Heather Earle, the project lead for the light trap network in Comox Valley, said the data collection focuses on Dungeness crabs in their final larval phase, as there is limited knowledge about them at this stage. The juvenile crabs are strong swimmers and will moult one more time before losing their ability to swim. That's when they settle in an area as a crawling crab.
"The reason we target this last larval stage is because it gives us information on how many crabs are about to settle in an area," Earle explained.
The project has now reached its fourth year. For the first time, researchers will start developing a model to gain insights into the factors influencing the distribution patterns they have observed.
Understanding the abundance of this crab species will provide insight into the strength of the population and the potential health of the fishery over the next several years, Earle said. This data will offer fisheries valuable insights on how to harvest crabs sustainably.
Dungeness crab populations face many threats, such as ocean acidification and warming, according to the project's website. They also face localized pressures from activities such as fishing and coastal development.
The Campbell River monitoring station is seeking volunteers to help check the traps and tally the findings.
"A special thing about volunteering is that you're checking your trap, and then there's this whole regional effort of traps and people all doing the same thing," Earle said. "You're not really alone."
