"We've gotten a lot of feedback," said Frank Dawson, assistant secretary for aquatic resources. "Now, we're starting to talk more about the details."
About a thousand Maryland watermen earn at least part of their livelihood crabbing, according to state natural resources officials. Some, like Pierce, still make their entire living on the water - survivors in an industry in which the winds and the tides exact one kind of toll and the financial pressures another. Many other people in the region work for businesses connected to crabbing - seafood processors, restaurants and marinas.
This month, Maryland Watermen's Association President Larry Simns got crabbers together to hash out a proposal that they say would protect the fishery and safeguard their livelihood: a 50-bushel limit on female crabs for potters in the fall and a 30-bushel female limit for trotlines.
Simns said watermen can live with stricter limits on females in summer, but anything more severe than 50 bushels in the fall would close crabbers down. The watermen are proposing no limits on male crabs.
Dawson declined to discuss the negotiations, but said the watermen's proposal did not go far enough. The response frustrated Simns, who said crabbers made a good-faith effort to expedite the process and are now in limbo.
"It ain't a business where you just go to the store and buy what you need for the next day," Simns said. "They're buying now for what they need for the fall, and if they order it, they've got to pay for it."
A waterman can earn two or three thousand dollars a week or more during late summer and fall, but rising expenses for fuel, bait and equipment cut into that. And during several months of the year, there is no work.
Some scientists worry that the states' actions will not do enough to help the crab population rebound. In 2000, when harvests dropped to the worst levels in decades, Maryland and Virginia put in restrictions but the population didn't bounce back.
The two states are taking steps in the right direction, said Tom Miller, a crab scientist at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science. But what would work best, he said, is a quota. Maryland knows roughly how many crabs are out there because it counts them during its winter dredge survey. And it knows that the population will be stable if crabbers harvest slightly less than half of them. The states could allow crabbing until the quota is reached, he said.
