21/10/2026
Here's a great video of a Jenny mud crab heading to deeper water to lay her eggs.
There is always a lot of chatter about being allowed to keep Jennys in QLD as well as people saying (sometimes a little too strongly) that crabbers in NSW should put them back.
It is important to understand how the fishery works and why there are different rules in QLD & NSW.
Jenny mud crabs head out of the estuary to lay their eggs, 1000s of them. THE crabs start their life out 5, 10 or 20kms out to sea, depending on where they find a suitable place depending on depth and water temp.
Where they are laid has the EAC, so just like Dory, they are swept down the coast and as they get bigger they start to make their way back into an estuary. Crabs that came out of Cairns may end up in Hinchinbrook or Townsville from Rockhampton they might be in estuaries around Gladstone or Bundaberg etc etc, all the way down the coast.
Then we get into NSW where the water temperature is lower and that slows the Jennys ability to reproduce. So much so that most of the crabs caught in NSW would have a Queensland jersey on if they played in State of Origin!
So that is why NSW are allowed to keep Jennys and QLD aren't.
To back that up, I was talking with Michael a pro crabber with 40+ years experience in the Newcastle region and he said that between him and all of the other crabbers in the region they have only ever had ONE single crab caught that had eggs, in the whole time he's been crabbing.
Nature has got it's self sorted! We just need to go along for the ride.
Have a cracker of a day!
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