July 6, 2020 — The bay’s blue crabs aren’t being over-harvested and the population isn’t depleted, which means there’s no need for significant changes in how many watermen catch, the Chesapeake Bay Program’s annual Blue Crab Advisory Report said.
Although crab numbers declined from 594 million last year to 405 million this year, that’s in line with natural variation, according to the report, which was released Wednesday.
At that level, there’s no need for significant change in the rules the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, or its counterparts in Maryland and the Potomac River, set for when and how watermen catch crabs, the report noted.
The key issue for those regulators, and the Bay program, is that the stock of female crabs remains robust. If too many are harvested when they could be reproducing, the overall population could crash, as happened in the late 1990s.
While the current count of female crabs declined by 26% from last year’s total, to 141 million, that’s well above the 70 million minimum fisheries scientists say is needed to maintain the population of crabs, the report noted.