Only five signs located in one of the four parks along Newark Bay in Bayonne warn people not to catch or eat potentially cancer-causing blue claw crabs, The Jersey Journal recently discovered.

Out of the five signs, one is located at the northern end and four are located at the southern end of the county-run Stephen R. Gregg Bayonne Park, with no signs along the half mile of walkway in between.

At Richard A. Rutkowski Park, an additional "No Fishing or Crabbing" sign is posted at the entrance to the park, but with no warning regarding the risk of cancer. No signs could be found in either Veterans Park or City Park.

"I've seen people that didn't know, catching crabs right out here, in the corner," said George Toye, 67, a lifelong Bayonne resident, in Veterans Park.

Toye said he told a man who was crabbing that it wasn't allowed, to which the man responded: "Not allowed to crab? I don't see no sign."

The Lower Passaic River and the Newark Bay are the only waterways in the state that have an outright ban on catching and eating crabs, according to the NJ Department of Environmental Protection. The bodies of water are highly polluted with toxic material from the production of Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

The DEP's ban has been in place since the mid-1980s, but without enough education, enforcement and signage, people have continued to go crabbing, The Jersey Journal and The Star-Ledger have previously reported.

Those caught in the act are subject to fines ranging between $100 to $3,000 for a first offense, according to the DEP.

On top of the ban on crabbing, the DEP advises people to have at most four meals of striped bass out of the Newark Bay per year, and at most one meal of white catfish per year. Meanwhile, pregnant women and young children shouldn't consume any fish at all from Newark Bay.

Glicer Decastro, 54, of Jersey City, who was fishing at Veterans Park, said he caught white perch in the Newark Bay last year, which is one of the fish species the DEP advises people not to eat at all out of the bay.

Decastro said he gave the perch, as he does with all of the fish he catches, to one of his friends, who then ate it.

A lot of people ignore the DEP's advisories, he said, which Toye further affirmed.

"I know people that don't follow that at all. They eat a lot of striped bass. (The fish are) coming in from the ocean, and people say 'They're not in here long enough to get any bad things,'" Toye said.

Stephen R. Gregg Bayonne Park is run by Hudson County, while the other three parks along Newark Bay are municipal parks.

DEP spokesman Larry Hajna said putting up the signs is a "multi-team effort," where the state works with locals to identify where signs are needed. But Bayonne spokesman Jeff Meyer said yesterday that the city isn't responsible for putting up the signs in any of the parks.

"The county posts the signs in conjunction with the DEP (in all four parks along Newark Bay in Bayonne)," Meyer said. "We don't have jurisdiction."