According to the officials bids are too few and asking prices are too high while the state has its own fixed price to offer. The official also said that Maryland’s pioneering effort to conserve Chesapeake Bay blue crabs by buying back commercial crabbing licenses has come up short. It is told that there are too few crabbers were willing to sell, they say, and too many of those who were asked for too much – up to $425 million in one case.
Lynn Fegley, assistant fisheries director at the Department of Natural Resources, opined that the state officials have decided to reject all 494 bids they received in the state’s first-ever Priceline-style “reverse auction.” Worried that a sudden resurgence in commercial crabbing could jeopardize the recovery of the bay’s crab population, state officials want to reduce the number of people able to catch large quantities of them for sale.
It is true that this is the first attempt in Maryland to buyback crabbing licences. In this way the DNR had hoped to be able to retire roughly 2,000 licenses. But the state received fewer than 500 responses by its July 31 deadline. And after evaluating the bids, state officials concluded that only about a fourth had quoted prices the department was willing to pay.
State officials admit that they’re not sure why more crabbers didn’t respond to their buyback offer. The economist suggested that active crabbers who didn’t want to sell might have submitted high bids they knew wouldn’t be accepted, or simply didn’t respond. According to the state officials say that although there are 6,000 commercial crabbing licenses of all types, only about 1,800 are actively fished.
