Two men caught illegally catching Dungeness crabs off North Vancouver’s Cates Park last year have been fined over $3,000 by the courts.
The two men were caught illegally fishing for crabs off the pier on Jan. 11, 2015.
RCMP officers spotted the pair throwing crab traps into the ocean from the dock around 9 p.m. that day. When questioned, neither of the men was able to produce a licence. One of the men was also using three crab traps. The legal limit is two.
Altogether the men were in possession of 27 crabs, all of which were under the required legal size and 21 of which were female – which is also banned. Four crabs per person is the daily limit for Dungeness crab.
Some of those crabs were discovered in a plastic garbage bag hidden in a spare tire of a vehicle belonging to one of the men.
Regulations also stipulate that no crabbing is allowed in that area from one hour after sunset to one hour before sunrise.
Sellathurai Sivakumaran, 38, of Vancouver was fined $1,600 April 4 after pleading guilty to possession of illegally caught crabs and fishing without a licence. Sirpavan Kandsamy, also of Vancouver, was fined $1,700 last May after pleading guilty to catching and retaining undersize crabs and for retaining more than the daily crab quota.
