Long-term protection for crabs - "freezing" dormant crabbers
In reporting on Maryland's plans for regulating the crab catch next year in The Baltimore Sun today, I skipped over the state's proposal to "freeze" about a thousand crabbing licenses that apparently haven't been used in years. It won't do anything right away, but could be important in the long run.
Though about 6,000 Marylanders hold commercial crabbing licenses, only about a third actively crab in any given year, state fisheries officials say. They worry that Maryland and Virginia efforts to bring the Chesapeake Bay's crabs back might be undermined if those thousands of dormant crabbers suddenly get back on the water for whatever reason - the beautiful swimmers become more abundant, or the prices paid watermen for their catch pick up.
So the Department of Natural Resources proposes to render "inactive" those "limited crab catcher" licenses that have reported no catch since 2004. There are about 1,200 of those, according to Gina Hunt, deputy fisheries director.
But the department intends to exempt certain licenses that weren't used, including those held by active-duty military personnel, participants in a fisheries apprentice program, or residents of an island three miles from the mainland (Smith and who else?) State officials think that's about 200 folks.
Unused licenses would be frozen until the bay's blue crab population rebounds to about 200 million adult crabs, if it ever does. It's estimated to be around 120 million now, 70 percent below the 1990 level, as figured by the state's annual wintertime survey of crabs.
Dormant crabbers wouldn't lose their licenses right away if the state regulation goes through next spring. Instead, they'd be unable to renew the licenses in September, when the current permits expire. So they could go out crabbing next summer, but it would be their last for at least a few years.
Virginia already has yanked about 850 licenses issued for crab pots and peeler pots, said Jack Travelstead, fisheries chief for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. Those permits had not been used in five years.
To read a summary of Maryland's proposed regulations, which are to be published in January, click here.
(Photo by The Baltimore Sun's Glenn Fawcett)
I report on the environment and Chesapeake Bay. A native of West Virginia, I have focused mainly on Maryland's environment since moving here in 1983. Along the way, I've crewed aboard a skipjack in the bay, canoed under city streets up the Jones Fall from the Inner Harbor, and gone deep underground in a western Maryland coal mine. Recently, I have been covering the growth and development transforming the landscape. I love seafood, rambles in the country and good stories. I hope to share some here.
