Overfishing

TOO MANY fishing boats, too few fish. Too much wasteful, subsidized ocean trawler fishing. Too little regulation of open-ocean fisheries, too much destruction of spawning stock and habitat.The result may be an imminent collapse in the world's ocean fisheries, where two-thirds of the major target species are fully fished or overfished. Tuna, swordfish and cod are some of the popular table fish that need urgent attention to undo the damage of world over-catches.But the global catch continues to grow, and government subsidies of $10 billion to $20 billion a year accelerate fleetefforts.

Chesapeake Bay blue crabs are in serious danger of being over-fished this year and are not reproducing well enough to rebound from the kind of pressure being placed on them, Maryland natural resources officials say. Rather than impose regulations to deal with the possible crisis, the Department of Natural Resources is asking watermen for their help in figuring out a solution. Officials say they want to find a way to sustain a healthy population of the Maryland crustaceans and a robust crabbing industry, one of the state's last viable fisheries.

Maryland's commercial watermen hauled in 33.7 million pounds of blue crabs between April and November, according to preliminary reports from the Maryland's Department of Natural Resources.The catch was an improvement over the 26.2 million pounds caught during the 1998 season, the worst in nearly two decades. The harvest remained below the 38 million pound average of the past eight years.The figures are about what DNR biologists expected after their winter dredge survey in January, said Eric Schwaab, head of the fisheries division.

RICHMOND, Va. -- A new study concludes that Chesapeake Bay's blue crabs have been overfished since the late 1980s, and that crabbers' harvests will eventually have to be cut by 10 percent, and maybe more, if the industry is to last.The two-year study by scientists at the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory is a new piece in a growing consensus that the bay's most valuable commercial fishery is being pushed to its limits and perhaps beyond."We're either just below the maximum sustainable harvest or we've been well over it most of the time since the 1980s," fisheries biologist Thomas J. Miller told members of the Chesapeake Bay Commission meeting here yesterday.

ROCKLAND, Maine -- With a flourish, the cooks unlatch the so-called World's Largest Steamer. Some 400 lobsters, bright red after their 11-minute steam bath, are hauled out and rushed to the crowds lined up to crack into them. Another 400 go into the steamer, and another and another over a weekend in which lobster is king but also lunch.The Maine Lobster Festival held here this month is a small town's salute to the state's iconic crustacean. There was much to celebrate: Maine lobstermen are coming off their best year ever, having caught 46.3 million pounds of sweet bounty in 1997, with a value of $136.

IT IS REASONABLE to ask whether the modest new fishing restrictions announced this week by the state are enough to protect the bay's crabs.But an opposite question might seem as reasonable:Do we need to worry even modestly about the crab? Might it be the ultimate survivor, nearly invulnerable to overfishing?The suggestion seems ironic, considering that even watermen increasingly are buying the conventional wisdom about crabs: that increased pressure in recent decades has pushed them close enough to the breaking point that limits are in order.

VIRGINIA PRIDES itself on state's rights, but if ever there was an advertisement for federal control, it is our bay neighbor's destructive, cynical and stupid insistence on overfishing the horseshoe crab. Destructive, because the eggs of the crabs, which spawn throughout the Chesapeake but most heavily in Delaware Bay, are vital to many of the Western Hemisphere's migratory shorebirds. Great flights of red knots, ruddy turnstones, palmated sandpipers, dowitchers, sanderlings and other species travel up to 5,000 miles each spring between South America and northern breeding grounds.

RICHMOND, Va -- A preliminary scientific study shows that Chesapeake Bay's blue crabs are not being overfished, casting doubt on the need for catch restrictions protecting the bay's most important species.The study, presented here yesterday to a joint meeting of Maryland and Virginia officials, was immediately challenged by other scientists, one of whom presented contradictory research of his own.The clash of studies clouded the beginning of a pioneering effort by Maryland and Virginia to reach agreement on new regulatory measures to protect crabs.

Do you know? Are penguins in trouble? Answer: Over-fishing, pollution and oil spills threaten the wild population. Learn more! Visit the African penguins at The Baltimore Zoo. Read "Little Penguin's Tale" by Audrey Wood. 1. Penguins hatch covered in down (soft gray feathers), which is replaced later by waterproof feathers. 2. A breeding colony of penguins is called a rookery.

Yellow perch fishing is a rite of late winter and early spring in Maryland, when anglers work the tidal tributaries, hoping to find the spawning runs near peak levels.In some rivers, it is hard enough to find yellow perch, much less catch more than two or three of legal size. But the yellow perch continues to be a special species to good numbers of fishermen."Yellow perch are so regional that you get some people fishing for yellow perch who may not fish much for anything else the rest of the year," said Harley Speirs of the Department of Natural Resources Tidewater Fisheries.