With blue crabs harder to find in the Chesapeake Bay this year than in recent times, Maryland fisheries officials have proposed for the first time limiting crabbers' catches by restricting their gear and harvest times.
Environmentalists say the state's move is a good first step toward protecting the bay's last healthy fishery from over-harvesting. But the proposal has set off a civil war of sorts among watermen, pitting crabbers from Southern Maryland and the lower Eastern Shore against those from the Baltimore area.
The Department of Natural Resources has drafted changes in state crabbing regulations that would limit the number of collapsible crab traps and other gear that can be used by people catching crabs for sport.
The agency also wants to bar commercial crabbers from working on Sundays or from 3 p.m. until 4:30 a.m. the rest of the week.
The changes, to be aired in hearings in Annapolis on Tuesday night and in Easton on Wednesday, are prompted by a plan for protecting crabs that Maryland and Virginia both adopted three years ago. The plan, drawn up as part of the bay restoration effort, recommended that both states limit the catch because growing numbers of fishermen using more and more gear could cause the crab population to decline. If adopted, the changes would take effect next April.
Bountiful crab catches continued to increase until this year, however, when cooler weather may have kept as many crabs from hatching or growing as large as they have in recent years. In the first seven months of this year, Maryland crabbers only caught 6.5 million pounds, about one-third of what had been caught during the same period last year.
"Everybody knows something needs being done after a slack year," said Glenn Evans, president of the Tangier Sound Watermen's Association on Smith Island. His group, which represents about 100 crabbers in the traditional Somerset County watermen's community, supports the restrictions "100 percent," he said, noting that they only work Monday through Saturday now.
"We've been here 300 years and never had to crab before on Sunday in our life," Mr. Evans said. A Sunday ban also would mean a "day of rest" for the bay.
But Daniel Beck, an Essex waterman, said the Sunday ban would deprive him of $20,000 in income because he sells that day's catch to Baltimore area restaurants.
