800-plus Virginia watermen could lose crabbing licenses

NEWPORT NEWS

State officials have approved another measure to protect blue crabs in the Chesapeake Bay by limiting their harvest, a move that comes on the heels of several other dramatic rules enacted this year in Virginia waters.

Under the latest regulation, approved late Tuesday by the Virginia Marine Resources Commission, more than 800 watermen will not be allowed to renew their crabbing licenses in 2009 - and for at least three years after that - if they did not catch crabs from 2004 to 2007.

The new rule is intended to freeze those 800 or so licenses, which have gone unused during the four-year baseline period.

The idea is to ensure that, if crabs stocks rebound as scientists expect, a sudden gold rush of fishing activity will not occur and wipe away gains made from other conservation steps adopted this year.

"We're not taking anyone's license away. We're just putting them on hold," Rick Robins, a commission member, told an anxious crowd of watermen during a marathon meeting Tuesday in Newport News.

Those watermen affected by the freeze can reapply for their licenses, but only after crab populations stay at a sustainable level for three straight years after 2009, officials explained.

The state has set that safe level at 200 million juvenile crabs in the Bay; the current population in Virginia and Maryland waters is about 120 million youngsters, according to scientific estimates.

There are exceptions to the new licensing rule, however.

A waterma n could continue crabbing next year by purchasing the license of someone else who is leaving the fishery and transferring it.

Or, between 5 and 10 percent of those watermen on the freeze list could appeal to the state for a special permit that would allow them to catch a limited number of crabs during the season.

According to state statistics, the freeze will hit 524 watermen who hold licenses for harvesting hard crabs with a pot, or trap, and 343 individuals who use peeler pots for catching soft crabs.

The action Tuesday is likely the last one Virginia will impose this year to benefit ailing crab stocks.

Alarmed by a decade-long decline in crabs in the Bay, the governors of Virginia and Maryland agreed to jointly cut harvests of female crabs by 34 percent this year. Without such action, the leaders feared a collapse of the Bay's most famous seafood species.

Virginia so far has limited the crabbing season by several weeks, set pot limits, required additional escape rings in pots, and closed the winter dredge fishery for the first time in more than 100 years.

That fishery, which relies on a heavy steel rake dragged behind a work boat, captures mostly pregnant female crabs. They are hibernating on the muddy bottom of the Bay, often in waters off Norfolk, Virginia Beach and the Eastern Shore.

The restrictions, along with the fragile stocks, led the federal government to declare the Bay crab fishery a national disaster this year. Congress has approved $10 million in aid to hundreds of Virginia watermen suffering for lack of work.

Ernie Bowden, a Chincoteague waterman and voting member of the state marine commission, said he "could live with" the license freeze, though he thinks it will do little good in the long term.

Even if 200 million juveniles are present after three years of protection, Bowden said, "there'll be no place to sell the crabs," given that processors are on the verge of going out of business already.

"I hope this all works, believe me," Bowden said. "I just think there's too many forces working against us."

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