State continues winter ban on dredging crabs

NEWPORT NEWS

Interrupted last month by the East Coast earthquake, state officials on Tuesday again took up the dicey issue of regulating crab harvests in the Chesapeake Bay.

After some tense moments and despite objections from watermen, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission voted unanimously to continue a 3-year-old ban on an historic technique for catching crabs called winter dredging.

The method, in use for more than 100 years, involves dragging a powerful metal rake along the bottom of the Bay where mostly female crabs are hibernating during cold winter months. Almost all of the females are pregnant with eggs that are released into the Bay in the spring and early summer.

Virginia banned the practice in 2008 as part of a suite of strict regulations intended to reverse years of sagging crab populations and poor harvests. The efforts worked.

So now, with stocks again flourishing, struggling watermen hit hard by the regulations wanted to renew dredging, at least for this winter, offering to let scientists observe their catch and make adjustments if problems became apparent.

“Let us go back to work,” said Ty Farrington, a crab dredger and member of the Virginia Waterman’s Association. “Virginia needs the economics of this fishery. We need jobs.”

But the marine commission said no, not yet, arguing that the crab recovery remains incomplete and still could backslide if too much harvesting is allowed.

For the same reason, the commission also rejected a proposal to let more than 300 crabbers regain their commercial licenses, which were suspended in 2008 to curb fishing pressures on the Bay’s signature seafood species.

Even a milder offer, to give back licenses to 14 full-time watermen, was denied, with commission members saying the move would not be fair to the hundreds of other crabbers waiting in line.

The commission was supposed to vote on the controversial matters last month, but in the middle of debate, its headquarters in downtown Newport News began to shake violently from the earthquake. The building was evacuated and the meeting delayed until this month.

After the vote Tuesday, Farrington said the state waterman’s association will likely sue the commission over its decision and already is consulting a maritime attorney.

Crab dredgers also sued the commission after the initial ban three years ago, but did not prevail in court, though a state judge did say the state each year must consider a possible reopening.

For the past three winters, dredgers have been paid federal disaster money to help scientists recover abandoned crab traps, or “ghost pots,” from the bottom of the Bay. The funds were approved by Congress after the government declared the Bay’s crab fishery a national disaster.

But those funds are drying up and dredgers are wondering how they will make ends meet this winter.

Farrington said he might try catching oysters but likely will have to find another job: “I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

Until 2008, the Virginia crabbing season was year-round. Now, it begins in mid-March and lasts until late November.

Environmental groups, including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and The Nature Conservancy, as well as scientists supported the commission’s decisions Tuesday.

Commission staff also recommended the rules remain in place.