Fat Wallets and Thick Heads

This is Mudeford Quay in Christchurch. Mudeford Quay is famous for two things really, the Mudeford Run, which has nothing to do with Steve Cram and everything to do with a rushing tide and catching crabs from the Quayside. For generations small children have been encouraged to dangle lengths of string, with a piece of bread as bait, over the side of the quay and wait a few minutes before hoisting ashore a selection of small crabs which, as custom has it, are then placed in a bucket of water until the child gets bored and the crabs are returned to the sea.

Unfortunately organised gangs are no driven from London in vans with containers in the back and hoicking the crabs out of the sea in their hundreds. The crabs are then sold to London restaurants where they are used to make, amongst other things, crab soup. Now to those who believe that everything in life has a price this might not matter, but to the Eco-system that exists in Christchurch harbour this has the potential to cause long term damage. Crabs, just like every other living thing on the planet, are part of a food chain, not part of the chain which ends with human beings as it happens, and the removal of thousands of them will have serious repercussions on the balance of nature in the area.

Just down the road in Poole the council and it's high-tech snooping equipment has been making the news again this week. However, unlike the furore that followed the revelations a couple of months ago that cameras and men with notebooks were being used to check the validity of a family's right to a certain school for their children, this weeks news has been met with an almost Gallic shrug of indifference. The cameras are being used to try and catch the removal of a variety of mollusc's from Poole Harbour and the reason for the shrug of local fisherman's shoulders is that the 'blow-ins' are gathering crustaceans which if eaten will cause food poisoning due to the fact that high levels of bacteria have been found in the bivalves that are in the area around Seagull Island.

The council said the investigation, which takes two weeks at a time to conduct, was continuing.Tim Martin, head of legal and democratic services at the council, said: "We are committed to responding to the needs of local people who are concerned about crime, disorder and antisocial behaviour. Illegal shellfish dredging can cause harm to the conservation of stocks in the harbour and could also lead to a potentially serious public health risk if illegally fished stock is not fit for consumption."

One of the locals who has harvested shellfish in the harbour for 20 years said: "It's a hammer to crack a nut. If anyone is stupid enough to fish poisoned shellfish they will soon be discovered because of large numbers of people falling ill. I'm not sure they need to crawl around in the bushes like the SAS to prove it."