The compassionate guide to catching a crab

The timeless summer pursuit of dangling a hook laced with morsels of bacon over the harbour side in the hope of luring a hungry crab has been a rite of passage for generations of children visiting Norfolk's celebrated seaside villages.

Yet while families may look back nostalgically on golden memories of sunny days spent filling buckets full of snared crustaceans, the pursuit affords an altogether different experience for the poor old crab.



This week, visitors to Wells-next-the-Sea in north Norfolk are to be issued with guidelines to ensure that idyllic summer days do not result in lasting damage to the area's crab population. From Friday, those buying plastic buckets and crabbing lines from local shops will be handed a list of dos and don'ts, which it is hoped will put an end to incidents of unintentional crab abuse.

The guidelines, contained in 10,000 free leaflets, will include advice such as limiting the number of aggressive males kept in each bucket, ensuring they are immersed in supplies of fresh sea water and of not placing them in direct sunlight. The initiative follows a study by zoologists from Cambridge University, which found that Wells's native population of shore crabs, or Carcinus maenas, was suffering from a much higher incidence of damaged or missing pincers on stretches of beach where crabbing took place compared with those parts free of bait-dangling tourists.