Maryland Crab Season Opens to Anxiety

ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- The days are longer, the water's warming up and waterman Don Pierce is readying his crab rig in the yard, much as he has each spring since 1975, when he started plying the Chesapeake Bay for the estuary's trademark blue crabs.

But there's an edge to Pierce this spring as he repairs the cabin in the Bri-Steff, his 48-foot crab rig. Instead of looking forward to retirement, Pierce is considering a new job because of what is widely expected to be a lousy crab season on the Cheseapeake.

"I feel like crying in my beer," said Pierce, who planned to leave his Kent County home for the water Tuesday, the start of Maryland's commercial crab season.

The prognosis for the blue crab, the Chesapeake's hallmark seafood product, is bad.

Last year's catch was Maryland's second-lowest since 1945, and winter population surveys indicate this year's harvest may not be much better. Fishery regulators in Maryland and Virginia say the crab population is nearing dangerous lows. Regulators are expected to reduce the harvest even further to save crabs.

"Where am I going to go to find a job at 59 years old?" Pierce said. He doesn't know yet what the restrictions will be this year, but he doubts they will be good. "This is going to be devastating to us. To everybody."

From Pierce's dock at the north end of the Chesapeake south to Virginia waters to the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean, watermen can't stop worrying about crabs. Neither can the picking houses that pack crab meat for sale, or the dwindling number of restaurants that still serve Chesapeake blue crab instead of relying on cheaper, more reliable meat from the Gulf of Mexico or Asia.

The worry extends to government scientists who manage the crab fisheries in the Chesapeake. Maryland and Virginia scientists say they've got one last shot to protect the crabs or they could face the collapse of one of the region's last viable fisheries.

Annual Maryland-Virginia surveys that project a census of the Chesapeake's crab population show crabs have been down _ below 500 million estimated to be living in the Chesapeake _ for 10 years straight. As recently as 1993, the estimated crab population was more than 852 million. This year's survey isn't complete yet, but scientists working on it say there's little reason to believe it will show the crabs have bounced back.

Lynn Fegley, a fisheries biologist for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, spelled out possible restrictions to a crowd of skeptical crabbers who packed a church basement in Annapolis last month. The options Fegley laid out were aimed at protecting adult female crabs _ called "sooks." Few went over well.

The ideas include a possible 6.5-inch size limit on female crabs. A complete ban on catching female crabs could be imposed for recreational crabbers. There is also likely to be a requirement for crab pots to include an extra escape hatch for the smallest juvenile crabs to escape.

Fishery managers are trying to persuade crabbers that the Chesapeake's blue crabs can be saved _ but only if everyone agrees to take a financial hit for a few years.

"We always give and give and give and never gotten nothin' back," said Sonny Norris of Baltimore County, a crabber who works out of Essex. He, like many crabbers, says poor water quality and habitat loss are to blame for the problem, not overharvesting.

"Anywhere there used to be grass, it's parking lots now. And all that stuff ends up in the Bay every time it rains," he said.

Regulators don't disagree, but say crabbers are the easiest targets in their efforts to increase crab numbers in the short term.

"We all take a measure of responsibility for this," Bull said. "But we're managing a fishery. We can't make the water any cleaner. We can't make the grass grow. But we can reduce the numbers of crabs we take out of the Bay."

Back in Kent County in eastern Maryland, Pierce isn't sure what to say when a supplier calls him asking how many crab pots he'll need for the fall.

"What am I supposed to tell him? That I have no idea what they're going to do to us by then?" Pierce asked. "I do realize that yes, we do have a problem. I realize that yes, it'd be nice to keep 200 million spawning females in the estuary. The problem is not the crabs, it's the human race."