Virginia's fisheries regulators, faced with angry watermen and seafood packers, voted last month to do nothing until they hear from Maryland. Both houses of Maryland's General Assembly adopted weakened measures to license recreational crabbers and reduce their harvests, but the bills have not reached a conference committee, and the legislature is rushing to adjournment Monday. A joint hearing on the Department of Natural Resources' proposed emergency restrictions on commercial crabbers was abruptly canceled last week, leaving the regulations in limbo. A coalition of lower Eastern Shore watermen and seafood processors has threatened to sue the state over the restrictions, which cut the amount of time watermen can fish for crabs, and the Maryland Watermen's Association has withdrawn its support. Association President Larry Simns says his members are prepared to make sacrifices to protect the crab fishery, but not without guarantees that others will do their part.
People love the crab.
They love it as an icon of the region. They love to eat it. Yet they don't seem to understand that if they want crabs for the long haul, everybody needs to make a sacrifice now. Faced with steadily declining crab stocks, a committee of 27 scientists concluded in December that the harvest must be cut by 15 percent to avoid a population crash. The Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee, composed of legislators, fisheries regulators, commercial seafood interests and environmentalists from both states, had met for two years to draft a plan to stop the slide.