Blue Crab

The agency that regulates Virginia's fisheries created a summertime crab sanctuary yesterdaystretching nearly 100 miles up the middle of Chesapeake Bay from its mouth at Cape Henry to the Maryland line at the Potomac River. The Virginia Marine Resources Commission approved the sanctuary, which generally follows depths of 35 feet and more, by a 6-1 vote after a hearing in Richmond. It will be in effect from Saturday to Sept. 15 this year and from June 1 to Sept. 15 in following years, said Wilford Kale, spokesman for the commission.

Bill was so good campaigning in Macedonia, he ought to run for senator in New York himself.Don't tell the justices, but the doctrine of state sovereignty makes no economic or political sense in the 21st century.Firing teachers only improves the schools when they are replaced by better teachers.The guy vote is so split, Baltimore's next mayor is probably Mary W. Conaway.Forget about the vanishing oyster, blue crab and shad. Our bay is the world's richest stinging jellyfish habitat.Pub Date: 6/25/99

The agency that regulates Virginia's fisheries tentatively approved plans yesterday for a summertime blue crab sanctuary stretching nearly 100 miles up the middle of the Chesapeake Bay from its mouth at Cape Henry to the Maryland line at the Potomac River. The Virginia Marine Resources Commission ordered a hearing on the sanctuary proposal next month and is expected to approve it after the hearing. The sanctuary, which generally follows depths of 35 feet and more, was developed by Rom Lipsius of the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences, with input from watermen, wholesalers, and environmental groups.

Nearly 100 watermen attended a meeting in Annapolis last night to hear state officials' proposals for restricting Maryland's blue crab harvest in hopes of protecting the increasingly struggling crustacean. The options on the table include bushel limits for crabs, restrictions on the soft-crab fishery and a maximum size limit on females. Lynn Fegley, the Department of Natural Resources' blue crab expert, said the department is hoping to have a draft proposal ready in two weeks and will introduce the regulations in mid-April.

Eight years ago, a chance question at a Maryland General Assembly hearing put Yonathan Zohar on a path to unlocking the secrets of the Chesapeake Bay blue crab. The Jerusalem-born, Paris-educated endocrinologist answered questions about techniques he used at his Inner Harbor lab to enhance the breeding stock of certain fish. Today, Zohar is using the same techniques to help reinvigorate the once-robust crustacean. He and his team have spent more than $12 million - most of it courtesy of a federal earmark from Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski - mapping out the blue crab's life cycle in their hatchery and placing the crabs in the bay to watch how they lived.

WHAT THE BAY provides is linked to what we are willing to invest in it. So it is disheartening to see Maryland and Virginia, to save a measly $75,000 a year each, risk selling their $100 million-a-year blue crab fishery down the river. If the crab population remains at or near its recent, historic lows, or crashes, blame the cheapskate states for chucking one of the best conservation tools devised to date. I'm talking about this week's disbanding of the Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee.

The crabs clung to the shaded side of an outboard piling near the surface of the placid creek at dusk, the jimmy cradling the female in its walking arms and vigorously finning the water with its swimming legs.The jimmy's choice of cover was as yet poor, but with the female settled contentedly in the cradle, the jimmy would carry them both from the piling into a nearby grass line or perhaps to a recess in a bulkhead, stand guard as the female completed her final molt and then mate.The same process will be completed millions of times by millions of Atlantic blue crabs through the late spring, summer and early fall in the Chesapeake Bay and suitable areas of its tidal tributaries.

The future of Chesapeake Bay's blue crab industry could be taking shape in huge blue tanks and tiny petri dishes in a laboratory at the Inner Harbor, where University of Maryland researchers are creating a science around the crab's life cycle. They hope to use what they learn in the basement of the Center of Marine Biotechnology to re-stock the bay with hatchery-grown juvenile crabs. "We're using the tools of biotechnology to study and better understand the fundamental process of the blue crab life cycles," says Yohnathan Zohar, director of the Center of Marine Biotechnology.

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. - In the face of economic and environmental warning signs, state fishery authorities have taken the drastic step of declaring a vast 665-square-mile fishermen-free sanctuary through the heart of the lower Chesapeake Bay to provide safe passage for the millions of female blue crabs now on the southward trek to their high-salt spawning grounds. The marine police are on the prowl by boat and airplane to keep poachers from the female crabs that are the key to maintaining what has been the Chesapeake region's most lucrative fishery yield.

The panel that spurred unprecedented cooperation between Maryland and Virginia to save the Chesapeake Bay blue crab will become extinct this week. The Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee - which pushed acceptance of a landmark 15 percent cut in the annual crab harvest - will hold its final meeting tomorrow. Then it will fall victim to budget shortfalls and fiscal politics in both states, potentially jeopardizing efforts to revive the bay's crab population. "What has happened over the last seven or eight years has been very productive as far as the bay and the tributaries, as far as fishing and crabbing," said Del. John F. Wood Jr., a Southern Maryland Democrat and co-chairman of the blue crab panel.