THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 16, 1995 TAG: 9509160281
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
North Carolina fisheries managers are keeping a close eye on discussions by the Chesapeake Bay Commission on the dwindling populations of blue crabs in Maryland and Virginia for hints on how best to manage this state's stocks.
Recent studies for the Chesapeake Commission and initiatives under way in Maryland and Virginia to protect those states' blue crab catch could serve as models for a North Carolina management plan, according to Bruce L. Freeman, North Carolina's fisheries director.
``It would make sense to have a regionwide strategy for protecting the blue crab population because the issues would be the same,'' Freeman said.
Fishermen, fisheries managers and environmental groups throughout the three-state region are alarmed over a dramatic and largely unexplained drop in this year's blue crab catch.
According to preliminary data from the Division of Marine Fisheries, Carolina's state's blue crab catch is down about 52 percent in January through June 1995, from the same period in 1994. Hard crabs caught in pots are down 54.5 percent and the numbers taken by crab trawls are off 67 percent. However, the peeler crab and soft crab catch have increased 27.3 and 3 percent, respectively.
In the Chesapeake Bay, the crab population has dropped 61 percent in the past two decades, and 34 percent in just the past five years, according to the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
In Maryland, Gov. Parris Clendening proposed banning crabbing two days a week, Wednesdays and Sundays, and closing the 1995 season Nov. 15, a month and a half early.
A legislative committee on Wednesday voted to cut the crab harvest for the year by 20 percent.
Virginia has established three crab sanctuaries and imposed a limit on the size of dredges used to harvest crabs from winter beds. Virginia also has limited boats to 400 pots for soft-shell crabs and 800 pots for hard-shell crabs.
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation in August called for a temporary ban in Virginia and Maryland on the harvest of blue crabs from waters deeper than 40 feet in the Chesapeake Bay beginning ``as soon as possible'' - a move that would close roughly 25 percent of the bay and its tributaries.
North Carolina's crabbing industry could see new restrictions in the next two years as part of a rewrite of the state's coastal fisheries management by the fisheries Moratorium Steering Committee, according to steering committee Chairman Robert V. Lucas.
The crabbing industry is the primary reason for the current ban on commercial fishing license sales and will be a major focus of the upcoming rewrite of new fisheries rules, Lucas recently told the Associated Press.
Despite the economic importance of all types of crabs to fishermen nationwide, the habits of blue crabs remain a mystery.
In North Carolina, some critical information gaps about the blue crab exist:
Fisheries managers lack information on changes in the spawning stock, the effects on the population of wasteful harvesting practices such as abandoned crab pots crabs; the effects of shrimp trawling in molting habitats and the effects of the environment on population changes.
The blue crab's decline could be the result of a combination of factors:
The complex life cycle of the blue crab; an increase in the number of fishermen plying waters for crabs as stocks of fish and other shellfish have declined; and neglect by fisheries managers.
A particularly vexing question for North Carolina fisheries managers when they write the state's crab management plan will be whether to protect egg-bearing females, Freeman said. by CNB