Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs Rebound - Count Up 60% From 2009

[hatrack]

Bring on the melted butter. The cherished blue crabs of the Chesapeake Bay are on the rebound. Jubilant Maryland and Virginia officials announced Wednesday that the estimated population had increased 60 percent over last year.

It's the first time since 1997 that levels are this high. Scientists figure 658 million of the luscious little crustaceans are scuttling about - or about to scuttle about, when the water warms - on the bay bottom. The number remains far below the 852 million in 1993. But let's not get too crabby.

"Today, we can see firsthand what progress looks and feels like on the Chesapeake Bay," said Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who appeared on the crab deck of a Kent County restaurant, the Fisherman's Inn. He and others credit a brutal set of crabbing restrictions enacted in Maryland and Virginia to reduce the harvest 34 percent for the last two years. When the restrictions started in 2008, the blue crab was suffering historic lows in spawning stock. The U.S. Department of Commerce declared the Chesapeake Bay crab fishery a federal disaster and $15 million in federal funds arrived for each state to bolster crabs and watermen.

Now, officials are saying the measures were as successful as they were politically contentious. The latest numbers come from a bay-wide winter survey in which dredges collect crabs, still buried in the mud, at 1,500 sites in the bay. It was conducted by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Most years, crabbers harvest roughly 50 percent of the bay's crabs. Fifty-three percent is considered sustainable, but in seven of the years between 1998 and 2007, the harvest exceeded that. The 2009 harvest has not yet been confirmed, but initial counts put it at 53.7 million pounds - or 43 percent of the bay's total crab population. That's below the target level of 46 percent.

EDIT

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/health_science/daily/20100415_Blue_crabs__numbers_soar_in_Chesapeake.html

[Happyhippychick]

1. Yippee! Great news for this Maryland lady!

[babylonsister]

2. Yum! Nice to read some positive news. nt

[Statistical]

3. Great news for Virginian "fisherman?" "crabberman?".

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Crustacamen? nt

[PearliePoo2]

4. Nice to see a restorative plan actually work.

Yeehawww....melt the butter is right.
(being a Left-Coastie, I'm partial to the Dungeness though! :9 )
I always enjoy reading your enviro posts hatrack, thanks.

[pinboy3niner]

6. This left-coastie misses the CB Blues

With butter and crab spice (I make my own), there's nothing better. I don't know if it's the crab or the spice, but it seems to produce a natural high. Dungeness simply can't compare . . . *sniff!*

[thecrow]

5. How is the fish population. though?

I've heard that when the fish diminish, crabs and jellyfish move in.
Could some of this be attributed to that?

[pamela]

8. Very good news.

Crab meat is a diet staple in my house-crab cakes, crab imperial, soft shells,...nom nom nom.

(Fisherman's Inn is in Queen Anne's County, not Kent County. They make a killer crab bisque.)

This post made me hungry.