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Beche De Mer
(Sea Cucumber - Trepang)

Commercial Fishing for Spanner Crabs:

Spanner Crabs are available wild-caught, these marine dwellers are found from close inshore to at least 100m, usually buried in sand from where they attack small bottom-dwelling fish. Their long, almost goblet-shaped, bright orange shells (even when uncooked) and spanner-shaped front claws are quite distinctive. Found around most of the Australian coast from NSW north to southern WA, they are caught commercially, mainly using dillies, but also as a bycatch of Prawn trawling, off southern Queensland and northern NSW. The fishery has increased greatly since the early 1980s.

Also known as Frog Crab and Red Frog Crab and Curacha Crab, Kona Crab (USA)

CAAB (Codes for Australian Aquatic Biota) Code for Spanner Crab: 28 865001

Spanner Crabs  are caught commercially, mainly using dillies, but also as a bycatch of Prawn trawling, off southern Queensland and northern NSW. The fishery has increased greatly since the early 1980s

Commercial spanner crab fishers are required by law to use dillies - frames with netting stretched across them - no more than 1 metre square in size.

A bait bag containing three or four bait fish is attached to each dilly. Ten or 15 dillies are clipped to a trotline by a short rope at about 50-metre intervals. Each trotline is marked by a flagged buoy.

The gear is left in the water for 30-60 minutes and then winched up. As the nets come aboard they are cleared of crabs. The undersized crabs are immediately returned to the water, and the legal-sized crabs are kept alive.

Commercial spanner-crabbers are required to use dillies.

Spanner crabs are harvested all year round, except during a one-month spawning season from 20 November to 20 December. Most of the Queensland catch is taken in deep oceanic waters south of Yeppoon.

The fishery is managed through a total allowable catch control (TACC), currently set at 1923 tonnes, with individual transferable quotas (ITQs) also issued to fishers. The spanner crab harvest has averaged approximately 1300 tonnes annually over the past 5 years.

The bulk of the catch is exported as live product to East Asia, mainly Taiwan. The crabs are cooled to about 15°C and packed in polystyrene boxes for transportation by air. A small amount of spanner crab is also sold as chilled cooked product on local and interstate markets.

Season:
Available from January to October, peaking from July to October with the fishery closed for most of December.

Scientific Name	Ranina Ranina
Location	East & West Coasts of Australia
Season	All year round
Size	To 150mm carapace length & 900 grams
Australian Species Code	00 702002
Taste, Texture	-

Video from Queensland Seafood about Spanner Crab Fishing:

See Also:   Crab,   3 Spot Crab,    Blue Swimming Crab,    Brown Crab,   Common Swimming Crab,   Dungeness Crab,   Jonah Crab,   King Crab,   Sea Crab,   Snow Crab,   Softshell Crab,   Spanner Crab,   Spider Crab,   Stone Crab,   Velvet Crab,   Canned Crabmeat

See Also:
Spanner Crab (Ranina Ranina) Photographs and Information
Catching Spanner Crabs Photographs, Video and Information
Cooking Spanner Crab | Recipes Using Crab and Crabmeat
Commercial Fishery for Spanner Crab (Ranina Ranina) | Buy Sell Spanner Crab