Watermen

I just finished reading an article in a local publication that went as far to name various fishing communities such as "Tangier Island, Smith Island, Crisfield, Cambridge, St. Michaels, Oxford, Kent Island, Rock Hall and others in Bay Country" as being in " the middle of a poaching epidemic of unreal proportions. " The article goes on to describe this problem as being linked to illegal drug use. While some of what the author describes may be true to a much lesser extent, I have grown angered and frustrated by some, but not all, of these so-called journalists leaving the general public with such a negative impression of the watermen community.

Anglers and watermen are at odds, again, this time over fishing license fees.  With the Maryland Department of Natural Resources facing a looming deficit in funds for overseeing both recreational and commercial fishing, anglers are pushing a bill that would require the state to cover 90 percent of its costs for managing each fishery with license fees from the people engaged in that activity. They testified before the House Environmental Matters Committee in support of HB1173 , while watermen argued that the issue needs more study.

An Eastern Shore watermen faces up to $28,000 in fines for multiple oystering violations in Dorchester County, the Maryland Natural Resources Police said Thursday. Officers charged Joshua T. Tieder, 23, of Taylors Island with 13 counts of possessing undersized oysters, 14 counts of failing to tag the location of his harvest and one count of exceeding the daily catch limit. Tieder was seen leaving the Wingate harbor boat ramp with oyster bushels that he later put in a nearby marsh, according to police.

Meet your anglers. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources will host its second Bounty of the Bay event, a five-course dinner celebrating the state's seafood and watermen, on Feb. 28 at the Boatyard Bar & Grill in Annapolis. The event is designed in part to give the public a chance to bring watermen, the public and DNR staff to the same table. Here's a video from the first Bounty of the Bay dinner, which was held last March. "We want to remind people that even during the winter months the bay continues to provide us with ample fishing opportunities and plenty of amazing seafood options," said Steve Vilnit, the DNR's fisheries marketing director.

— David Whitelock stood in the open stern of the workboat and reveled in the nearly pristine view as the vessel cruised the Nanticoke River. A bald eagle flew along the wooded shoreline while his 6-year-old daughter Hannah fidgeted around him. The 39-year-old from Deal Island and a few other watermen took off from oystering this week and spent a day retracing a voyage of Capt. John Smith, the 17th-century English explorer whose adventures helped open up the Chesapeake Bay to European settlement.

As president of the Chesapeake Bay Commercial Fishermen's Association, I have become increasingly angered and frustrated by the news media normally leaving the general public with such a negative impression of the watermen community. Over the past year, there have been numerous stories involving illegal fishing activities, both in print and as specials on local TV. Unfortunately, some of the facts are true - through at times the presentation is misleading - and we as an industry are certainly not proud of them.

Jack Brooks watches as 60 of his employees use short, quick strokes to pick meat from piles of freshly steamed blue crabs. As they place the meat into plastic containers, men steer in wheelbarrows to shovel more crabs onto the long metal tables. "We try to get everything out of the crab we can," says Brooks, co-owner of J.M. Clayton Co., a 120-year-old seafood distribution company founded by his great-grandfather. Just outside this room, in the waters of the Chesapeake, blue crabs appear to be making a comeback, raising hopes that after years of decline, the industry that harvests them may rebound, too. Annual counts show the bay's crab population has jumped sharply in the two years since Maryland and Virginia imposed major restrictions on catching females.

On a day when he could have been out oystering, waterman Mike Edwards trolled the Chesapeake Bay south of Annapolis on Friday for a different quarry. Sitting at the wheel of his workboat, the Miss Renee Two, he felt a "nudge" on the line he was towing astern and winched it in to discover he'd hooked a mucky but otherwise intact crab pot. A lone oyster toadfish lay trapped inside. "I got one this time," said Edwards - meaning the pot, rather than the fish. Edwards, 53, of Grasonville is part of a small navy of watermen who have been hired by the state Department of Natural Resources this winter to pull derelict crab pots from the water.

More than 150 watermen took a day off from the water Tuesday to protest a proposed oyster restoration plan and support a bill they say will help them hang on to their livelihood. The bill would protect the watermen's right to use certain equipment and techniques - power dredging and patent tongs - to harvest oysters. The areas where oystermen can use that equipment is limited, and the bill would prevent the state from further restrictions. "We see this as a pre-emptive bill," said Sen. Richard F. Colburn, a Republican from Caroline County, who introduced the bill Tuesday in the Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee.

J.R. Gross, a veteran waterman, will drive two hours from his home on Monday to his boat in St. Jerome Creek to begin harvesting oysters off the shores of Southern Maryland. Gross, a resident of Shady Side, said he is forced to make the drive because new oyster sanctuary restrictions limit him from harvesting at his usual oyster bars along the Calvert and Anne Arundel shorelines. A fourth-generation waterman, Gross said he expects his yield to be much lower this year because of new regulations that force him to work at locations that are more crowded with other fishermen.

We've been slurping Chesapeake oysters, my Chesapeake Bay Foundation buddy Don Baugh and I, for more than 100 years between us. And while we've known the bay in better times, we never had better oysters from it than the dozens we downed - chilled and fat and bursting with taste - over the winter holidays. It was Chesapeake seafood at its finest, and all of it was farmed - some raised in floats in Virginia by Tangiermen Rudy Shores and Mark Crockett; the rest grown in cages in Maryland by Hooper Islander Johnny Shockley.

An Eastern Shore watermen faces up to $28,000 in fines for multiple oystering violations in Dorchester County, the Maryland Natural Resources Police said Thursday. Officers charged Joshua T. Tieder, 23, of Taylors Island with 13 counts of possessing undersized oysters, 14 counts of failing to tag the location of his harvest and one count of exceeding the daily catch limit. Tieder was seen leaving the Wingate harbor boat ramp with oyster bushels that he later put in a nearby marsh, according to police.

State biologists have found "concentrated pockets" of dead oysters in the upper Chesapeake Bay, which they blame on a record-high influx of fresh water into the estuary this year. But the die-off appears so far to be limited to two areas north of the Bay Bridge, officials note, which together account for just 2 percent of the state's overall oyster harvest. Reporting preliminary results from a continuing baywide survey, the Department of Natural Resources said biologists recently found three-fourths or more of the oysters dead on bars between the mouth of the Patapsco and Magothy rivers and across the bay in an area north of Rock Hall.

A big fight is brewing over a little fish - a fish that no one wants to eat but that many regard as the most important in the sea. Catch restrictions loom on menhaden, which is too unsavory to grace a dinner plate but much sought by commercial fishermen. They catch them in staggering numbers to be ground into animal feed, to extract their heart-healthy oils for humans and to be used as bait to catch other fish, including Maryland's iconic blue crabs. Menhaden also play a vital role in the Chesapeake Bay's ecosystem, feeding on plankton and serving themselves as food for many of the fish, birds and animals that people do eat or care about.

As president of the Chesapeake Bay Commercial Fishermen's Association, I have become increasingly angered and frustrated by the news media normally leaving the general public with such a negative impression of the watermen community. Over the past year, there have been numerous stories involving illegal fishing activities, both in print and as specials on local TV. Unfortunately, some of the facts are true - through at times the presentation is misleading - and we as an industry are certainly not proud of them.

I just finished reading an article in a local publication that went as far to name various fishing communities such as "Tangier Island, Smith Island, Crisfield, Cambridge, St. Michaels, Oxford, Kent Island, Rock Hall and others in Bay Country" as being in " the middle of a poaching epidemic of unreal proportions. " The article goes on to describe this problem as being linked to illegal drug use. While some of what the author describes may be true to a much lesser extent, I have grown angered and frustrated by some, but not all, of these so-called journalists leaving the general public with such a negative impression of the watermen community.

Ewell. -- Governor Glendening's new crabbing regulations, if enacted, will signal the beginning of the end for a way of life that has endured through two world wars and the Great Depression.The proposal includes banning crabbing Sundays and Wednesdays for the rest of the crabbing season and ending the season early, November 15. Next year, crabbing would be banned one day a week, and the season would end October 31, two months ahead of the normal December 31 closing. These regulations seem to come at the behest of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which has unilaterally declared the Maryland blue crab population ''on the verge of collapse.

Someday, perhaps as early as March, Maryland's striped bass may join the main ingredients of Europe's Filet-O-Fish sandwich on the list of fish known worldwide as abundant, well-managed and caught in environmentally friendly ways. The state has spent more than $131,000 and countless hours of study in a bid for the Marine Stewardship Council's seal of approval, a symbol of sustainability held by about 10 percent of the world's fish species and fish products — including the cod, haddock, hoki and pollock sold by 7,000 McDonald's restaurants in Europe.

I believe the Baltimore Sun made a grave mistake by canceling Outdoors Girl Candus Thomson 's column. As president of the Maryland Watermen's Association, I often locked horns with Candus, but I always felt that she showed both sides of an issue and was always fair, and even though a bit controversial, it was good for the public and paper sales. The thousands of recreational and commercial fishermen, hunters and outdoorsmen and women in the state need her column, or one like it, to represent their interests.