"Watermen don't want to be given work," Parks said. "Watermen don't want a handout."
Kent Island waterman Billy Crook has had work through the government-funded Oyster Recovery Project, which among other things has paid watermen to move oysters in the bay. He said he would have little interest in similar work.
"We barely made it last year, and now we've got huge diesel prices to deal with," Crook said. "It's the worst I've seen in 31 years of working the water."
Jay L. Newcomb, a Dorchester County councilman who manages a crab processing plant on Hoopers Island, said the offer of state-financed work amounts to little more than "patronizing watermen."
Last year's crab harvest in the Maryland part of the bay and its rivers was just under 22 million pounds - the lowest in three decades. Female blue crabs make up about half the harvest in Maryland's portion of the bay and most of it in Virginia's.
Though the waters of the Chesapeake are in Maryland and Virginia, longtime observers could recall no similar coordination between the two states. In recent decades, the two states have generally blamed each other for the decline of blue crabs.
Maryland watermen and scientists have pointed out that Virginia takes most of the female crabs harvested from the bay. Regulators there have allowed watermen to take pregnant females, known as sponge crabs, and to dredge for crabs in winter, when the females are hibernating in the mud.
Virginians have complained that Maryland watermen harvest too many females in the fall, when the crabs are migrating to the lower bay. Because of that, they say, fewer crabs can reach the sanctuaries Virginia has established in the Chesapeake Bay's main stem.
Relations turned especially frosty in 2001, when both states imposed restrictions on crabbing. Because a Maryland legislative committee blocked immediate approval of the regulations, Gov. Parris N. Glendening decided to close the crab season a month early in hopes of reducing the harvest. Virginia did not follow suit. Watermen in places such as Smith Island could look across Tangier Sound and watch their Virginia competitors take crabs that otherwise might have gone into their baskets.
Scientists and regulators in Maryland who have long advocated looking at the crab as a baywide species ee the dialogue with Virginia as a positive sign.
