FROM THE SHOP / TUNNELS
Tunnel wire
and color.
Fishermen ask whether the wire in a tunnel, and the color of that wire, changes how crabs come into the pot. This note separates that question from the Dungeness research we can actually point to.
What the shop will build
A tunnel on one of our pots is a welded opening: count, shape, height, and width come from the order. Standard and round entrances are both builds we do. Trigger type and escape rings are separate choices. Wire color is a preference we can follow. It is not a promise that one color catches more crab.
Color trials are on other crabs
We did not find a published Dungeness catch trial that holds the pot the same and changes only the tunnel color. The color studies people pass around are different animals.
A blue swimming crab study in Indonesia, Portunus pelagicus, found yellow trap entrances caught more crabs than dark-green or red entrances, in the lab and in Banten Bay. Cover mesh size changed which sizes stayed in the trap. That paper is “Adjusting Trap Mesh Size and Entrance Color to Increase Capture Efficiency of Blue Swimming Crabs,” in Fisheries Management and Ecology. It is not a West Coast Dungeness trial.
A Chesapeake Bay gear report, “Seeing Red: Does the Color of a Crab Pot Really Matter?” compared black-and-red vinyl, black vinyl, and galvanized pots for blue crab, Callinectes sapidus. The author reported a small lead for the black-and-red pots. That fishery, pot, and crab are not this one.
The Dungeness result we can cite is about escape, not attraction
Rudershausen and Hightower tested Dungeness pots in “Dungeness Crab Trap Catch Efficiency Related to Escape Ring Location and Size” (North American Journal of Fisheries Management, 2017). Rings in the bottom corners let out more undersize crab than the usual top-mounted rings. Legal male catch was not statistically different among the configurations they compared. That is about which crabs stay in the pot, not which color draws them to the tunnel.
Boats on this coast run pink tunnels and other colors. Treat that as a fisherman’s preference. It is not, by itself, a measured catch difference for Dungeness.
If you want a tunnel talked through
Tell the shop the opening you want, the trigger, the rings, and any wire color you prefer. We will build that order. We will not tell you a color has been shown to bring more Dungeness crab into the pot.