Pat Norris and his brother Kenny have been crabbing since they graduated high school, taking their boat out from Ridge, near where the Potomac meets the Chesapeake Bay, to fish crab pots.

They both live along St. Jerome's Creek, a beautiful little place about 15 miles south of the Patuxent Naval Air Station, and they know many other crabbers in St. Mary's and Calvert Counties.

Like many watermen working the Lower bay, the  brothers Norris are worried about the coming restrictions that will cut the harvests by one-third in Maryland and Virginia.

But unlike many of them, the Norris family hasn't gotten to say their piece.

The Department of Natural Resources has been on a restrictions road show for the past several months, talking to watermen in Baltimore, Annapolis, Cambridge and Smith Island about the new rules, and changing their proposals in part based on feedback. But DNR officials haven't made it to Southern Maryland, and consequently, they haven't heard from the crabbers there.

"We're not trying to ignore them," DNR spokeswoman Olivia Campbell said.

She added that they're close enough to Annapolis to have made it to their meetings -- much closer than Hooper's Island.

That may be true for anyone crabbing out of Lusby, but I'm not so sure it holds up for the Norrises and their watermen neighbors. It took me about two hours to get from Ridge to Annapolis in moderate traffic. Hooper's may seem more remote, but it is actually not much further. 

Like the Hooper's crabbers, the Norris brothers would like to see the pain spread more evenly. They suggest not allowing boats to have more than one license, so some crabbers would not get to fish 1500 pots while others only get 900.

They also said hte state should consider limits on peelers, though they do catch the lucrative soft crabs too. And Kenny, like most watermen here, thinks Virginia needs to address the sponge crab issue: he said Va. watermen could just wait a few weeks and catch the crab after it drops its sponge.

It's an interesting idea. But the plans seem to be pretty firm. The legislative committee will be reviewing the emergency regulations later this month, and we should know by then whether the rules will go into affect in June, or whether the department will have to put them in place later, and thus close the season in early October as opposed to late October.

"We all agree that something needs to be done," Kenny Norris said. "But we don't want to be punished because of whre we live and where we work."