Virginia commission lifts ban on winter dredging for blue crabs; opponents of decision snap back – WTOP News

The Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) voted to lift a ban on dredging for blue crabs in the winter in a 5-4 vote on Tuesday.

The move drew immediate fire from neighboring Maryland where the Department of Natural Resources said in a release that the DNR “strongly disagrees with Virginia’s decision.”

Maryland DNR Secretary Josh Kurtz said in a statement that the recovery of the blue crab after a steep decline in the 2000s “can be directly traced to Maryland and Virginia cooperatively managing blue crabs, especially females, based on science.” The action by the VMRC on Tuesday, “breaks with this successful approach.”

“It’s a bad day if you care about blue crabs,” he wrote.

Winter dredging involves towing a “half-inch nylon mesh liner” along the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, according to the DNR website. The survey allows the department to receive essential information for the “management of the (blue crab) species,” including amount, age and spawning potential. There were 317 million crabs living in the bay so far this year, according to the department.

Zach Widgeon, director of communications with the VMRC, was quick to say, “We didn’t open the fishery, nothing has changed.” Widgeon said the move allows the VMRC staff to now conduct research to see “what would dredge fishing look like in Virginia in 2025?”

Widgeon said there had been “lots of contention” over whether the VMRC could have prohibitions over fisheries: “Does that discriminate against certain user groups, in particular the winter dredge fishermen?”

When the winter dredging prohibition went into effect in 2008, Widgeon said there were 98 eligible permit holders harvesting crabs in the fishery. “That user group has declined drastically” since then, said Widgeon.

He said since then, “a lot of our commercial watermen” have been asking “what is the trigger point” for when winter dredging could resume.

Allison Colden, Maryland director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, told WTOP the move by the VMRC raises questions.

“More questions than answers, in fact,” she said.

Those questions included “How many people would be allowed to participate, how many days of the week?” And how would a potential harvest impact the crab population across the Chesapeake Bay?

Colden explained the concern over reopening the winter crab fishery stems from the tumultuous history of the crab population.

Prior to the 2008 closure of the fishery, “Ninety-six percent of their harvest was adult female crabs that were harvested before they had an opportunity to spawn and contribute to the next generation of crabs,” said Colden. “At that time, we had declared a ‘federal fisheries disaster’ based on the low number of crabs in the bay and concerns about the long term sustainability of the population.”

Concerns about the crab population remain, Colden said.

In the winter dredge survey of the crab population released in May, the VMRC and Maryland DNR estimated the blue crab “abundance” at 317 million, down from the previous year’s survey of 323 million.

The VMRC will meet again in September, when it will discuss and vote on crab dredging regulations.

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