Crabbers, name your price. In an unprecedented move to protect Chesapeake Bay crabs, the state is offering to buy back more than half of the commercial crabbing licenses held by Marylanders.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources announced Thursday that it wants to retire up to 3,676 of the "limited crab catcher" licenses it has issued over the years and is willing to pay for them.
The voluntary buyback is the state's most recent bid to protect the bay's iconic crustacean from overfishing as it recovers from a near-disastrous decline. Although the bay's crab population rebounded significantly last year in the wake of stringent restrictions put on commercial crabbing, scientists say it has not fully recovered and remains vulnerable to another drop if people licensed but not now crabbing went out on the water after them.
The state has issued about 6,000 commercial crab licenses, but only about 1,800 are actively fished, according to state officials. If even a portion of the inactive crabbers get back on the water, officials fear, it could undermine the catch restrictions in place to help rebuild the crab population.
But state officials met with resistance this year when they attempted to "freeze" more than 1,000 limited crab catcher licenses that had not reported any catch in the previous five years. The "limited crab catcher" permit, which costs $60 a year, allows holders to fish with up to 50 wire-mesh "pots" or an unlimited amount of baited line and sell their catch.
Those licensees would have been barred from crabbing commercially until the population returned to healthy levels for at least three years in a row. But the inactive crabbers thronged public meetings to protest that they were being punished even though they had not been party to the recent overfishing of the bay's crabs.
Many said they were hanging on to the licenses in hopes that the crab fishery improves, or to supplement their income in retirement or in case they lost their jobs. The licenses are automatically renewable and transferable, so many are given or sold to relatives or friends.
The department mailed letters this week to all license holders, giving them until July 31 to submit bids specifying the amount they would be willing to take for their permits. In what is known as a reverse auction, the state would set a maximum price it would pay, then buy back as many licenses as it can afford, starting with the lowest bids.
