B.C. crab fisher fined after illegal catch found under car seat

A Dungeness crab. (Jennifer Nicole Buchanan / Shutterstock)

A British Columbia judge has ordered a fisherman to pay a $3,000 fine after he was caught with five crabs under the front seat of his car.

Ronglin Zhang pleaded guilty last month to possessing the undersized crabs in contravention of the federal Fisheries Act.

Provincial court Judge Tamara Hodge, writing in her sentencing decision, condemned the “surreptitious nature” of the illegal crab harvest, saying it threatens the existence of the fishery for future generations.

According to court documents, a concerned citizen called authorities to report suspicious behaviour at the Nanaimo crab-fishing dock on the morning of May 8, 2025. The witness described “an individual taking crabs, hiding them in a jacket, and then walking back and forth to their vehicle repeatedly,” the judge wrote.

A fisheries officer looked out his window, which overlooked the Nanaimo dock, and identified a man matching the description the caller had provided. The officer went down to the dock and identified Zhang and a vehicle associated with him.

“The fisheries officer inspected the trunk of the vehicle and found nothing other than crab fishing gear and, upon noticing a wet spot on the floor of the vehicle, looked under the front seats,” Hodge wrote. “There, the fisheries officer found five undersized Dungeness crab, each individually wrapped in a plastic bag.”

Two of the crabs were determined to be female, which cannot be legally harvested in Canada, according to Fisheries Department regulations.

“A clear message needs to be sent to people abusing our fisheries that our courts take that kind of an offence extremely seriously,” Hodge wrote. “The sentence needs to be one more than just a cost of doing business.”

The department provided a victim impact statement for the hearing, describing the importance of the Dungeness crab fishery.

“It is one of the most valuable commercial fisheries in British Columbia, as well as a traditional food source for our Indigenous people,” Hodge summarized. “What is particularly concerning about harvesting undersized crab is that, with respect to male Dungeness crab, they need at least a year after becoming a (sexually) mature male before they can be harvested and, without female crab, we do not get any more crab.”

Zhang apologized to the court for the offence and was given six months to pay the fine.