Hands Off Our Crawfish

Crawfish or spiny lobsters are ancient and beautiful crustaceans. Until recent years crawfish were extremely rare in UK waters having been heavily overfished by both divers and fishermen in the late 1960s and 1970s. Now they are making a comeback with large numbers of juveniles being seen on dive sites all around the south west of England, the Channel Isles, west Wales, west Ireland and west coast of Scotland.

The dive community is delighted to see the return of these incredible crustaceans and we don’t want to see history repeat itself and crawfish disappearing again.

The odds are stacked against them. Crawfish are highly valuable and there is little protection for them.  If divers begin collecting them it could only be a matter of weeks before our dive sites are once again devoid of crawfish.

As a community, we think that divers should set the best example and collectively stand up for this species by saying #HandsOffOurCrawfish

We hope that by setting a great example we can influence fisheries management to ensure that this species is back for good and the new crawfish fishery is as sustainable as possible.

Divers, Take the pledge to;  Never collect crawfish if you find them on your dives.

Sign up your Dive club or dive boat!  You can also help by encouraging your dive club or dive boat skipper to also pledge to not allow divers to land crawfish on their boat/ during dives they organise.

Follow The Crawfish Project on Facebook to keep up to date and share your photos of crawfish using the hashtag #HandsOffOurCrawfish!