Chesapeake Bay crab license buy-back successful

12/07/2009

Virginia has a permit buy-back program to help recover the blue crab in Chesapeake Bay/ Credit NOAA's Estuarine Research Reserve Collection

The Chesapeake Bay’s blue crab population has plummeted, and the state of Virginia’s Marine Resources Commission is buying back licenses from commercial crabbers in order to give the crabs a rest, and help their populations recover. But some crabbers aren’t going for it. They’ve been doing this their whole lives, and love spending time on the open ocean, rain or shine.

If the program works as planned, it will permanently retire – or in other words remove from the sea –  75,000 crab pots, a full fifth of crab pots currently used in Virginia’s waters. Both Virginia and Maryland, which border the Chesapeake Bay, have reduced the length of crabbing season, created sanctuaries off-limits to crabbers, and ended an age-old practice of raking the ocean floor for pregnant crabs.  Virginia actually stopped giving out new licenses a decade ago, but although the blue crab has finally showed signs of possible recovery, reaching the highest level since 1993, the population is still at risk. So Virginia decided to try a permit buy-back program.

Virginia and Maryland received $20 million from the federal government last year because the crab fishery was declared a disaster. Virginia got $16.7 million of that. Each licensed crabbers can submit a bid to the state for how much they would need in order to retire their license. Virginia crabbers hold has 1,850 permits and 500 of them submitted bids by the November 1st deadline, which ranged from $500 to $600,000 and the maximum amount granted thus far was $175,000.

The states have used some of the disaster money to rescue “ghost pots” – abandoned pots on the ocean floor that nevertheless continue to catch crabs and other marine life, which end up dying since no one retrieves them. I remember hearing about a program in Australia where one day a year, they close the crabbing fishery so unattended pots could be collected as "ghost crabbing" from abandoned crab pots kills many unintended species as well as crabs every year. I think that is a great program that should be implemented in many places!

Comments

[kevin]

How real are the videos on "Lost Tapes"? Why are'nt they like ....real big stories that you would see on say,"CNN",or ,"FOX",news networks?

[Bryan K Smith]

Interesting, but why would any crab go into an unbaited pot? Two things, raise the harvest of rockfish, bluecrabs biggest predator. 2nd, figure a way to produce more and more eel grass, highley needed for the reproduction cycle of bluecrab. thanks!

[Wendee Holtcamp]

That is a fantastic question Bryan and I'm glad you asked. What happens is one crab or other animal gets stuck in the trap, which dies and becomes bait for others, and the cycle continues. That is why they're called ghost pots because they keep killing long after they're abandoned.