"President Bush's cuts to domestic spending caused Senator Mikulski to dramatically reduce her congressional projects. In fact, several were eliminated altogether," said Mikulski spokeswoman Melissa Schwartz. "Earmarks are not forever."
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which sounded an alarm about the blue crab population more than a decade ago, had been keeping a close watch on Zohar's research. Foundation President Will Baker wrote federal officials urging them to continue the funding when he learned it was in jeopardy.
The center's work "has enormous potential for the future of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab population," Baker said in an interview.
Last year, Zohar's team put 215,000 crabs in the Chesapeake Bay. Though Zohar considers that a major accomplishment, he acknowledges that to make a difference in breeding stocks, they would need to put 6 million to 16 million crabs in the water.
Even more important to scientists were the findings about the reproductive life of crabs. The researchers learned that females mate only once but hold on to their eggs and can produce four or five broods in a lifetime. They also learned that the crab grows from larva to mature adult in about five months - much faster than previously thought. And they mapped the crab's migration patterns.
Zohar hopes the findings will influence fisheries management decisions, including the possible creation of a sanctuary in Maryland to protect crabs as they migrate down the bay.
The Center of Marine Biotechnology, part of the University of Maryland's Biotechnology Institute, began the crab project with little money and much skepticism from the scientific community. Even several scientists who joined Zohar's team questioned whether they could re-create the complicated life cycle of the notoriously cannibalistic blue crab in a hatchery, much less keep track of the crabs once they are in the bay.
The project began with a $300,000 grant from Phillips Foods and several hundred thousand dollars in state funding. In 2002, Mikulski, who has long been interested in helping Maryland's struggling watermen, went to see Zohar at his lab. She began earmarking millions of dollars a year for the research.
Though the project employs a few watermen at its crab nursery in Southern Maryland, it has relied mostly on the work of scientists. The researchers produced more than 70 papers and gave 125 presentations at conferences around the world.
