Blue crab eggs free#

The total weight of crabs watermen harvested in 2014 was 37 million pounds, the lowest ever recorded. Managers worked successfully to reduce the red drum by fishing them out, but another problem came out of nowhere.Ī harsh and sudden winter wiped out nearly 30 percent of adult crabs, marine scientists in Maryland and Virginia said, ending any hope for a fast rebound. “Baby crabs didn’t have a place to hide, and they were dinner,” Bull said. At the same time, grasses that conceal juveniles diminished. A plague of red drum fish that prey heavily on juvenile crabs decimated them in 2013. “But fishery managers are stunned by the curveball Mother Nature has thrown at us.”īull said female crabs and their offspring were hit by forces managers couldn’t control in the past two years. “We’re not happy with the status of the crab stock,” Bull said. The population rose over four years to a 21-year high of 765 million in 2012, then dropped like a stone the next two years. Virginia Marine Resources Commissioner John Bull disagreed, saying regulations worked. It’s like disaster has become the status quo.” “We’ve been doing this eight years and the stock is the same as it was when it was declared a disaster. “I don’t believe it’s going to get better, doing what we’re doing,” said Bill Mullis, chair of the Virginia Blue Crab Industry Panel of commercial fishermen and owner of B&C Seafood, based in Newport News, Va. When male crabs decline, those remaining mate more often, and sometimes can’t regenerate their sperm supply quickly enough, according to a study by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Smithsonian scientists worry that efforts to save females might produce a serious side effect: overfishing males. When the stock rose only to fall hard again last year, Virginia cut the number of females that could be fished by an additional 10 percent during the spawning run. The states cut the number of females that can be fished by about 30 percent.

Blue crab eggs free#

Some watermen say the steps taken by Virginia, Maryland and the Potomac River Fisheries Commission to rescue crabs after the population’s free fall in 2008 haven’t worked. View Graphic The blue crab life cycle takes about two years to complete. The blue crab life cycle takes about two years to complete.

Sixty years ago, the Chesapeake Bay yielded 75 percent of the crabs harvested in the United States now the withered stock yields about 35 percent, according to a report by the Maryland’s natural resources department. Both watermen and state officials are deeply worried about blue crabs’ future. The blue crab, Maryland’s state crustacean and a symbol of pride for the region as much as a resource, is more threatened now than at any time since biologists started to record numbers in the late 1940s. This year’s count is underway by Maryland and Virginia scientists at 1,500 locations. Last year, scientists estimated that there were only 68.5 million females old enough to spawn, far below the 215 million that officials say are needed to overcome natural threats such as predators and cold - and human threats such as commercial overfishing - without depleting the population. But those efforts are also mired in a debate over the best way to protect the crabs.Īs females go, so go blue crabs.

Officials are desperately hoping that steps taken to protect females last year will allow the fishery to rebound from the edge of disaster. It’s a critical time because the blue crab population is reeling, facing some of the lowest numbers in history. When spring comes, they will inch closer to the ocean with billions of eggs. Tens of millions of female crabs are scattered across the floor of the lower bay in southern Virginia, where the estuary pours into the Atlantic Ocean, waiting out winter for one of the most important events in their short lives. Deep under the cold, dark waters of the Chesapeake Bay, the answer to whether the decimated blue crab population can survive lies buried in mud.