Safe-zone gap undermines crackdown on crab harvests

A loophole has emerged in Virginia’s crackdown on blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay this year – one that officials say cannot be fixed until 2009 at the earliest.

The problem centers on the 1,020-square-mile sanctuary in the middle of the Bay, a safe zone intended to give female crabs a protected corridor to key spawning grounds in Hampton Roads.

Earlier this spring, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission voted to activate the sanctuary a month early, on May 1 instead of the usual June 1. It remains off-limits to commercial crabbers until Sept. 15.

Turns out, though, that a significant piece of the sanctuary, covering 146 square miles and located between Norfolk, Virginia Beach and the Peninsula, cannot be closed without an act of the state General Assembly.

That’s because the General Assembly created this significant piece, known as the Hampton Roads Crab Sanctuary, by passing a law in 1942. So, any change to its timing or structure would require a change in the law.

However, lawmakers already have adjourned this year and will not reconvene in regular session until January 2009 – after the current crabbing season is over. Both Virginia and Maryland have vowed to cut their catches of female crabs by 34 percent this year in hopes of sparking a population rebound.

Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant Jr. said he heard about the legal loophole several days ago and was not pleased.

“It is too late to address it legislatively this year,” Bryant said in an e-mail Friday, “so we will give consideration to doing so next year.”

Several local crabbers said this week that other watermen have figured out the loophole and have streamed into the still-open Hampton Roads sanctuary to lay their crab pots and go fishing.

“That’s where all the females go, and it’s wide open until June 1st,” said Pete Nixon, a Norfolk crabber and member of a state crab advisory panel.

John McConaugha, a crab expert at Old Dominion University and a member of the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, said the Hampton Roads sanctuary is especially important in the late spring and early summer, as most females head that way to release their eggs into the salty waters near the mouth of the Bay.

“I’m sure it was just something that we overlooked,” he said of the General Assembly requirement. “It’s an area we should definitely get closed.”

The commission passed, by regulation, the early closure of the entire 1,020-square-mile sanctuary at a hearing in March. No mention was made at the time that the Hampton Roads piece should have been handled legislatively.

Jack Travelstead, state director of fisheries, said that by the time Virginia and Maryland agreed to collectively limit crab harvests this year, “it was really too late” for the General Assembly to consider a sanctuary change.

But Travelstead said he does not expect harvests inside the zone to greatly affect the overall goal of reducing female catches by 34 percent.

The economic impact of the larger reform package upon watermen and seafood merchants is estimated to cost between $11 million and $15 million over the next three years.

To help soften the blow, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine last week asked the federal government to declare Bay crab stocks a disaster. If granted, the declaration could open the door to congressional relief aid.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com