VIRGINIA BEACH
State marine police completed a massive enforcement sweep Thursday against illegal crabbing in coastal waters and the Chesapeake Bay, a campaign described as the first of its kind in Virginia, aimed at protecting slumping crab stocks during the summer harvest season.
The crackdown, from the Potomac River to the North Carolina line and along the Eastern Shore, involved almost the entire marine police force of 70 men and women, and was kept secret until launched Wednesday morning.
"It was all hands on deck," said John Bull, a spokesman for the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, the agency that regulates commercial fishing and also oversees the marine police. "Unless you were on vacation or had a search-and-rescue on your hands, you were part of this."
By its end late Thursday, the sweep had resulted in hundreds of confiscated crab pots, dozens of tickets, more than 2,000 inspections - and some more bad blood among watermen, many of whom feel Gov. Timothy M. Kaine's administration has gone overboard in trying to cut harvests of female crabs 34 percent this year.
After receiving a court summons Thursday morning in Broad Bay in Virginia Beach, local crabber Brian Ewell did not mince words about the crackdown.
"Y'all have put enough regulations on us without all this crap!" Ewell snapped at two marine officers, Steve Bennis and Javier Arce, who had cited him for not having the right kind of escape holes, or cull rings, in his pots.
"Just give me the damned ticket and get out of here," Ewell added. "I've got work to do."
Bennis and Arce were not finished, however.
They also ticketed an agent working with Ewell, Mark Zirkel, for using pots also lacking the correct cull rings.
Both men face a court hearing next month in Virginia Beach and, if caught again, the possibility of losing their licenses.
Afterward, Bennis was philosophical about the encounter.
"Most guys out here are hard-working people trying to make a living and doing the right thing," he said. "Others would catch the last crab in the Chesapeake Bay and then blame us for it."
Of the more than 75 tickets handed out Wednesday and Thursday, the vast majority were related to new rules governing cull rings, officials said.
The rings, about the size of a baseball, are cut into the sides of square crab pots and designed to give smaller crabs a chance to escape back into the wild.
As of July 1, watermen are supposed to have installed four rings in each of their pots, of three different diameters, and all of them in the top chamber of their two-chambered pot. Failure to comply is a Class 3 misdemeanor.
The change meant that watermen had to alter all of their pots, which could take a lot of time and energy, considering that most crabbers use 150 to 500 such traps.
The crackdown stemmed, in part, from reports heard by marine police that many watermen were planning to ignore the new ring rules and hope no one caught them. They had good reason to think they could get away with it.
Virginia employs only 70 officers to patrol more than 5,000 miles of shoreline, conduct boating safety inspections, assist the Coast Guard with homeland-security assignments and enforce fishing rules.
"We're short-handed, out manned and out numbered," said Bennis, one of four patrol officers in a district that runs from the North Carolina line to the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay, west to the Elizabeth River in Norfolk and south to the Intracoastal Waterway in Chesapeake.
As part of the crackdown this week, Bennis and Arce focused on the Lynnhaven River. They inspected more than 50 pots in all branches of the river and found six violations, all related to cull rings. They confiscated four of the pots, whose owners will later be ticketed or called.
They issued two tickets, to Ewell and Zirkel, and found four other watermen in full compliance.
One was Joe Palmer, a retired Virginia Beach police officer who now sports a sun-bleached blond ponytail and an easy smile.
His pots were all equipped with five of the widest cull rings. On Thursday, he harvested eight bushels of crabs from the Western Branch of the Lynnhaven - "a pretty decent morning," he said.
Asked about state enforcement of crabbing rules, Palmer smiled wryly. "I think it's just right," he said.
Asked about new regulations aimed at protecting crab stocks, Palmer got more serious.
"The governor did not do anybody any favors by saying he wanted to cut harvests 34 percent," Palmer said. "A lot of what was passed is well-meaning, but it's causing a lot of pain. And I'm not sure it's going to do an awful lot."
To reduce harvests and hopefully spark a population recovery, Virginia this spring adopted several new regulations, and may pursue others next year.
It is shortening the crabbing season by one month, extending by a month a no-harvest zone in the middle of the Bay, requiring more cull rings, and hopes to end the controversial practice of winter dredging, in which female crabs are scraped from the bottom of the Bay during hibernation.
Since watermen can catch crabs only until 1 p.m., Bennis and Arce were finished by then, and returned to the docks at Long Bay Point Marina after a long morning on the water.
"We did some good work," said Bennis, a former Norfolk police officer and detective. "I'm sure the word will get around that we're capable of mustering this kind of effort, and people will comply."
Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com
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No one hit the real reason crabs are not there!
I am not a crabber, I have run charter boat for 25 yrs. I grew up fishing and crabbing with my family in the bay and tributaries. I will tell you the reason crabs are disappearing and the biologists don't want you to know.
#1 reason, Rockfish population goes up, crab population goes down. Rock eat a ton of crabs. A Nc biologist once went as far as says "rock don't eat crabs" Then after an article in the Pilot had to retract that statement. It's all in the public records. The same in the Chesapeake, no difference.
#2 Cow nosed rays. Think that they just eat baby oysters the the Army Corp of Engineers pay millions of dollars for? HA, No way!
Gov kaine is just a moron on everything I read and hear about him, moron!
Tell you what, trade jobs with any crabber for one week, then come back and write you negative comments! Thought not!
No, that's not exactly true
People who consume animal flesh will destroy the planet. It's just that simple. If you disagree, do a little research & see for yourself
I don't think jesus was a Vegan and after what the earth has been through, I doubt we could destroy the planet unless we used the nukes we have....
People who consume animal
People who consume animal flesh will destroy the planet. It's just that simple. If you disagree, do a little research & see for yourself...just avoid Peta's website. Most of the crap they post is heavily exaggerated.
Working crabmen are honorable...
If you spend any time cruising the Albemarle region you'll find it over run with "illegal immigrants" mining the waterways for every last crab. You can't tell me it isn't the same in Virginia.
No enforcement, fees or taxes - only profits. We are left with nothing. And the hard working are left to pay.
Osama bin Laden may have
Osama bin Laden may have gotten away but we caught the illegal crabbers!!!
democrats
It's the democrats fault.
Over crabbing, not pollution
I have been crabbing with a fish head and string since 1953 when I was old enough to tie knots. Back then two or three good size crabs could be caught at one time on one string. Only the jimmys were kept, the females being thrown back. Crabbing was pretty spectacular during the late 70s when the river and bay was closed due to Kepone. I always had a couple of pots at the end of someone's pier catching kepone crabs. The crabs were everywhere. I stopped pleasure crabbing in the 90s. Problem was "no crabs".
The water was more polluted back in the 50s, 60s and 70s and the only thing that changed in the 90s and later to today are the number of crab pots and large scale winter dredging. There are too many crab pots. The poor crab does not have a chance. Oh yes, don't forget keeping the females with millions of eggs for your dining pleasure. The watermen will catch all the crabs they can up to the last one. It is up to som
Clean up that Yankee River
"Does anyone else have any constructive ideas about how to protect the existing population and encourage growth?" asked culticdreaming. I wouid suggest that New York and Pennsylvania adopt laws and regulations as stringent as those governing the James River and Patomac River watersheds. The Susquahenna River, with its headwaters in upper New York state, drains an area larger than the James and Patomac Rivers combined. Yet those states have minimal watershed protection. Consequently, the Susquahenna River is currently the largest polluter of the Chesapeake Bay.
No more crabs for me ...
After reading the earlier story about the vanishing blue crabs, and now this story, I've decided to stop eating crabmeat, one of my favorite seafoods. It's not much, but it's all I can think of to do. I'd had no idea of the extent of some watermen's greed, and the idea of winter dredging especially bothers me. Actually, the entire idea of crabbing bothers me now.
VMRC needs to
Check everyone, don’t just pick on the few hundred watermen trying to make a living. Go after the recreational fisherman, the one whom doesn’t need a license to crab and keeps everyone they catch regardless of size or egg sack. I am talking about crabs barely and inch big. Go to the Portsmouth City Park trestle and look in a few buckets. Thousands of recreational crabbers take more illegal crabs then just a few hundred watermen.
What????
And we thought that crabmen were honorable men...I guess we know now.
Louisiana vs Virginia
Louisiana has all the pollution and loss of wetlands problems Virginia has, and more. On a recent visit there, I spoke to my brother-in-law, a part time commercial fisherman, about the crab fishery problems here.
When I told him that it was legal to keep female crabs with eggs and explained to him what winter dredging was, he was amazed we have any crabs here at all. Keeping what are called "berry crabs" with visible egg pouches and any kind of trawling for crabs (other than as bycatch from shrimp trawling) have been illegal there for decades. The crab fishery is healthy there, not in decline as here.
When you eat oysters at a local seafood restaurant in Virginia or Maryland, chances are they come from Louisiana. Soon, our crabs will be imported from there as well. It is a disgrace that Virginia has to look up to Louisiana when it comes to wise resource management.
Tax dollars hard at work...
I would like to thank these Officers for not wasting my tax dollars (and fuel) on their first trip out. These Watermen know the rules and to just give them a warning would have been a joke. They are not kids. Do it right, or get the fine. Now, the rest of them will get their gear updated and not get a ticket the next time they run this sting operation. Can't be mad at anyone but themselves. Job well done, the first time!
At least something was being done.
""The governor did not do anybody any favors by saying he wanted to cut harvests 34 percent," Palmer said. "A lot of what was passed is well-meaning, but it's causing a lot of pain. And I'm not sure it's going to do an awful lot."" - and yet if the governor did nothing, legitimate watermen would be screaming in 5-10 years because the crabs are all gone and why didn't he do anything about it? I think he's doing the best he can with a bad situation. Does anyone else have any constructive ideas about how to protect the existing population and encourage growth? Cutting back for a few years would seems to me to be the best and less costly way to do this. Good job to the marine police. 70 officers for 5000 miles of coastline. You need more people!
RE: What A Complete Waste
What's the point in having regulations if you're not going to enforce them? To the marine police: good job, keep it up.
wrong is wrong, laura.
Most of these watermen have known for some time of the new regulations. Should the state simply throw their hands up and let scofflaws continue? I think not. Ticketing can further minimize the loss of adult crabs in the region. A rebound in the crab industry will far outweigh the costs of a little gas and man-hours on the water.
I wish I could read just one article in the pilot without the topic becoming mired in the same old tired "Waaahhh!!! My tax dollars!" lament.
dont stop
crabs aren't a staple food,they are a delicacy.why destroy your livelihood and cause bad blood over this.leave those she crabs alone in winter give them a chance to lay their eggs stop taking any females for 3 to 5 years and they will come back with a vengeance.you have to manage this industry not with the i got to get my quota attitude or there will be no crabs for anyone.
Capital Offenses!
'not having the right kind of escape holes, or cull rings'
And these two are still out walking the streets?
What a complete waste
We had 70 state employees issue 75 tickets over 2 days for what amounts to a class 3 misdemeanor. WOW that's an impact. I would like an accounting of what each tickets costs in salary, court effort and to say nothing about fuel. Instead of taking the high road and educating the watermen with a warning that the next time they will be cited they decided to try and strong arm compliance. Stop wasting my tax money!
American Beast?
greed and individualism are only two of the things that made this country great, thank God we are not a great big commune like leftists want us to be, look at the "great commune" that is the auto workers union, yea...it is just peachy!, long live the individual!
GREED AND INDIVIDUALISM: THE AMERICAN BEAST
Keep up the good work. The beast needs to be bled.
About time
The officers are right . . . those two guys griping are part of the problem. They will keep every female as long as it meets the minimum. Combine that with winter dredging and by next spring, the same two will be wondering why there are no crabs. Another issue the VMRC ought to look into is out-of-state watermen.
That's awesome!
It's good to see that the state is really serious about saving future crab populations. To bad they can take away the offender's license to crab for these infractions.