Plan to buy licenses from Bay crabbers gets final OK

NEWPORT NEWS

Virginia approved the details Tuesday for a historic auction that will play out over the next several months:

In the name of conservation, the state is poised to buy back licenses from crab harvesters in the Chesapeake Bay.

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission has set aside $6.7 million in federal disaster aid to purchase licenses from dozens of watermen who voluntarily agree to stop crabbing.

The watermen must apply for the buyback program and must submit a secret bid on what they would accept financially to quit their trade.

Official forms will be sent out in the next several weeks to the more than 1,800 people who own commercial licenses to harvest hard crabs and peeler crabs, said Jack Travelstead, state director of fisheries.

The applications will be due back to the commission, based in Newport News, no later than Nov. 1. Cash awards will be announced in December and checks will be sent out soon afterward, Travelstead said.

The buyback program is the most dramatic use of $15 million in disaster relief approved by Congress last year in the wake of a crab crisis in the Bay.

Worried about declining stocks and weak harvests, regulators in Virginia and Maryland passed rules last year to reduce the taking of female crabs by 34 percent Baywide. The crackdown largely worked, with population estimates up significantly so far this year.

But watermen and their families suffered under the new rules, and last summer the U.S. Commerce Department declared the blue crab a federal fishery disaster for the first time in Virginia history.

Travelstead said that half of the $6.7 million will purchase licenses from full-time crabbers, or those fishermen who harvest the most crabs and work more than 100 days a year.

Thirty percent will be directed toward part-time crabbers and the remaining 20 percent toward those whose licenses already are frozen because of scant use in recent years, he said.

For those whose bids are accepted, Travelstead offered this caveat: If a crabber owes money to the state - for back taxes, child support, unpaid tuition - that person can expect the debt to be automatically repaid.

Commission director Steve Bowman said the buyback program is expected "to be a one-time shot," while other disaster relief funds can be used through 2011.

Officials could not estimate how many licenses they expect to purchase or what the biological effects will be on crab stocks, but Travelstead said Virginia has suffered for years from too many people harvesting crabs and that any reduction in fishing pressures will help stocks recover.

"This is a historic opportunity to use federal funds" to bring balance back to the crab fishery, said Rick Robins, a commission member and chairman of a special crab committee.

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