Maryland watermen reported catching more blue crabs last year than in 2007, despite new rules to protect the iconic Chesapeake Bay species, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.
State officials say they believe the figures were inflated by watermen angry about the catch restrictions.
Still, scientists say reports of an increased harvest raise questions about the effectiveness of Maryland's rules. And the situation is awkward politically, since Virginia joined Maryland in pledging to restrict the catch - and that state is reporting success.
The reported increase in Maryland is "troubling," in the view of one crab scientist.
"They were attempting to reduce harvest," said Eric Johnson, a fisheries ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater. "[Even] if the harvest comes in the same as last year, they certainly were not effective."
While acknowledging the higher reports from watermen, Maryland officials have declined to provide any figures, saying state biologists are still reviewing the data. Eric Schwaab, Maryland's deputy natural resources secretary, said other indicators being examined by state biologists suggest that Maryland came close to the two states' joint goal of reducing the catch of female crabs by a third.
"We're very confident that we did substantially reduce the female crab harvest," Schwaab said. But when asked how he could be sure when watermen reported catching more females, he replied, "We can't be."
Fisheries regulators traditionally rely on watermen's harvest reports to help them determine the effectiveness of their efforts to conserve a species.Maryland's reported increase comes as Virginia officials released figures this week showing that their watermen caught about 37 percent fewer females crabs as a result of crabbing restrictions there. Virginia officials said their figures were preliminary.
Prompted by surveys showing the bay's crab population to be seriously depleted and overfished, Maryland's and Virginia's governors pledged last April to take immediate steps to reduce the catch of female crabs by a third.
Such cooperative action was unprecedented. The the two states have differed over how to regulate the most lucrative segment of their seafood industries to protect a shared resource.
The bay's crabs spawn near the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia before fanning out throughout the bay and its rivers to feed, grow and mate. Pregnant females return to Virginia waters in the fall to spawn there in the spring.
