Politics & Government

NOAA: More Work Needed for Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs

While the stock has increased in three years of rebuilding efforts, more were depleted than originally believed.

A new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration indicates that although progress has been made to boost the population of Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs, more needs to be done because the stock was more depleted than originally believed. 

“The crab stock is improving throughout the Bay,” said Jack Travelstead, Virginia’s Fisheries Chief. “Collectively, we have made a lot of progress over the past three years. But this new science indicates we still have a way to go to achieve our goal of having a biologically stable stock with a robust harvest. This is a sea-change in how we will manage the fishery."

The report sets a new overfishing threshold as well as a new safe abundance level for female crabs. The assessment studied the reproductive capabilities, lifespan, gender and size distributions, according to a release from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

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“Having a more accurate approach to blue crab management benefits not only the population, but also our hardworking watermen, the seafood industry and recreational crabbers across the Chesapeake Bay region,” said Tom O’Connell, Director of the Maryland Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Service. “The new safe female abundance level and overfishing threshold will dictate how the fishery is managed in the years to come.”

The new stock assessment sets a new healthy-species abundance level of 215 million female crabs, up from the former 200 million, with overfishing occurring if 34 percent of the female crabs are harvested in a year instead of the former 53 percent.

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“The results of the new assessment are not expected to result in significant changes to the existing framework that will be used to manage Maryland’s 2012 fishery,” added O’Connell. “We will continue to focus on bushel limits and closures to achieve our targets, using harvest and winter dredge survey information to make these decisions.”

In September the Chesapeake Bay Stock Assessment Committee will meet and provide management recommendations to Maryland, Virginia and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission. 

“Overall, crabs in the bay are doing well. Implementing recommendations developed in the report, like focusing fishing regulations on female crabs, will help even more,” said Dr. Tom Miller, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, lead author of the study.

The stock assessment can be viewed in its entirety at http://hjort.cbl.umces.edu/crabs/Assessment.html.


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