THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 25, 1995 TAG: 9510250456
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 72 lines
Facing one of the lowest projected crab harvests on record, Virginia probably will adopt new limits on the prized Chesapeake Bay blue crab by the end of the year, officials said Tuesday.
Until now, Virginia has resisted public pressure to crack down on crabbing, though Maryland announced new restrictions this summer and scientific evidence has mounted that the pugnacious crab is in trouble.
But with newly released projections from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission that the 1995 hard crab catch will be the lowest since 1959, the tide seems to have turned.
According to state statistics, this year's harvest will be 25 million pounds once the commercial season ends Nov. 30. The historical average is 40 million pounds a year. The record low of 21.1 million pounds was set 36 years ago, said Wilford Kale, a VMRC official.
``I think we're in a dangerous situation that calls for some timely additional action,'' said state Del. Howard E. Copeland, D-Norfolk, chairman of the House Committee on Chesapeake Bay and Its Tributaries. He is a member of a legislative group studying the crab's recent plight.
The limits under consideration would probably not affect one of the most controversial forms of crabbing: Winter dredging, in which Virginia watermen scrape resting female crabs from the muddy bottom of the lower Bay.
Conservationists and Maryland watermen have long criticized the practice as particularly damaging to the millions of female crabs that swim south and settle near the mouth of the Bay to spawn.
The state Blue Crab Advisory Subcommittee will meet early next month to make recommendations for the new rules, which will be forwarded to state regulators in late November, said Timothy G. Hayes, an environmental lawyer who is the subcommittee chairman.
The panel will consider at least five restrictions, Hayes said. The most notable are a 400-trap limit on the number of crab pots each waterman could use, and a ban on harvesting or possessing pregnant crabs - known as sponge crabs - during the the month of August, when most are releasing their eggs.
``We're concerned, obviously,'' Hayes said. ``But we'd like to try some of these things first before we tackle anything more.''
Asked about possible restrictions on the winter dredge season, which runs from December through March, Hayes said that existing rules ``appear to be adequate, unless we hear something otherwise.''
Jack Travelstead, director of Virginia's fisheries, said one idea being discussed is to shorten the dredge season by two weeks. But that would require the approval of the Virginia General Assembly, which convenes in January.
Protecting female crabs should not be the only priority in any conservation program, said John McConaugha, a blue crab expert at Old Dominion University. He noted a Smithsonian study that found male crabs getting progressively smaller, making it more difficult for them to fertilize mature females.
``All of these things are pretty alarming,'' said McConaugha. ``We need to be looking at regulations in a number of areas.''
Scientists and state officials said they were not surprised by the latest catch projections. ``They really confirmed what we were hearing anecdotally from watermen - that something is not right out there,'' Travelstead said.
In 1993, Virginia started requiring watermen to report their crab catches. In the three seasons since then, these reports indicate a strong downward spiral: 51.1 million pounds in 1993, 34.5 million pounds in '94, and 25 million pounds this year.
Before mandatory reporting, harvest figures were much less reliable. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
The Virginian-Pilot
SOURCE: Virginia Marine Resources Commission
by CNB