GLOUCESTER, Va. — March 20, 2014 — The first day of Virginia's blue crabs fishery season opened on Monday, but cold weather and frigid water is leaving the state's signature crustacean sluggish and not moving around.
That means a very slow start to the crabbing season for watermen.
Cyndi Speight, operations manager at York River Seafood Co. on the Perrin River near its mouth to the York River, said she doesn't believe blue crabs will be landed until April due to the extended winter the region has been having.
"It's kind of hard to project what's going to happen, but we're hoping for a good year," Speight said.
York River Seafood Co. has been operating in Gloucester since 1945 and buys blue crabs directly from watermen. The company mainly sells wholesale and ships blue crabs throughout the East Coast, though it also sells locally via retail, Speight said.
The blue crabs in local rivers and bays are just not moving around due to the cold temperatures. Watermen know it and are waiting until the weather warms up, Speight said.
Menhaden, also known as bunker, are coming in, though.
"Right now, because of the cold I think the majority of watermen are bunker fishing," Speight said.
How this year's blue crabs season will measure up to previous years won't be known for some time. Results from an annual Virginia Institute of Marine Science winter survey of the blue crabs population is still a few weeks away, said Rom Lipcius, a VIMS marine science professor.
"My sense is that the fishery isn't going to do better than last year," Lipcius said.
The preliminary 2013 Virginia commercial harvest of blue crabs was 17.9 million lbs. statewide, with the majority of the harvest coming from the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, said Joe Grist, deputy chief of the Fisheries Management Division of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission.
It's too soon to project an outlook for the 2014 Virginia commercial blue crab fishery, but weather is playing a factor for now, Grist said.
Read the full story at the Newport News Daily Press