THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT  
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Tuesday, January 23, 1996              TAG: 9601230001
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A12  EDITION: FINAL  
TYPE: Editorial
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   56 lines

CORRECTION/CLARIFICATION: ***************************************************************** The editorial Tuesday on conserving crabs in the Chesapeake Bay described "buster crabs" (which are growing new carapaces), thus pushing off the old shells) as female crabs bursting their aprons with eggs. Wrong. Female crabs showing eggs are "sooks," or "sponge crabs." Correction published Thursday, January 25, 1996 on page A12 of THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT. ***************************************************************** CHESAPEAKE BAY BLUE CRAB VOTE FOR CONSERVATION

Federal researchers who reported last week that they could find no evidence that the blue crab is overharvested in Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries cautioned that their study should not be used to block the proposed tightening of crab-conservation regulation.

Experienced commercial crabbers and marine scientists involved in crab studies understand that dramatic, mysterious fluctuations in the crab population are normal. The just-completed study of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab by a team of bay-region scientists comforts watermen who favor rules less strict than the Virginia Marine Resources Commission is scheduled to vote on today.

Nonetheless, the commission should adopt today the four-point final crab-protection plan it endorsed in December. That plan would limit the number of hard-crab pots to 300 per license holder, reducing the number of commercial pots in Bay waters by 30,000, saving up to a million crabs a week.

The plan also would freeze the number of crabbing-license holders; bar the taking of visibly pregnant female crabs (``busters,'' so called because their eggs have burst open the female crabs' ``aprons''); and bar the taking of soft-shell crabs smaller than 3 1/2 inches.

1995 blue-crab harvests may have been better than any in several years for some crabbers. But the overall harvest was disappointing, in keeping with a long decline. Reducing the number of pots and protecting female crabs are sensible.

Such prudent measures to encourage blue-crab abundance are surely appropriate now that the near-elimination of oystering has left crabbing as the Bay's most-valuable seafood-industry activity. Without the further restraints on commercial crabbing that the Virginia Marine Resources Commission should decree today, the blue crab could go the way of the Bay oyster. That would serve no one's economic interest - not crabbers', not consumers', not the commonwealth's. by CNB