According to DMF there is a proposal to establish a limit of 50 blue crabs for a commercial fisherman holding lobster licence may harvest in Massachusetts. DMF hold a public hearing on this proposal. It is said that DMF will be accepting public comment on a possible three-year extension of the moratorium on harvesting river herring and other herring regulations and a proposal to prohibit cod fishing in the Cape Cod Conservation Zone during January and December.
DMF also said that the proposal for a crab limit originated with a letter from the Edgartown selectmen to the DMF, after the town’s shellfish committee received several complaints from recreational crabbers who worried about what they described as the dwindling population of blue crabs in Edgartown Great Pond. Edgartown shellfish committee chairman Cooper “Coop” Gilkes told that these complaints focused on a few commercial fisherman who took a large number of blue crabs from the pond.
He also said that along with concerns for the health of the Island’s blue crab population members of the shellfish committee were anxious to protect recreational crabbers’ ability to get an appropriate share. Tom Turner informed that the commercial fishing community believes that the selectmen’s view is very shortsighted and a personal type of opinion. He added that the actual biology indicates that there is a lack of crab in Edgartown’s Great Pond because of natural biological occurrences, mainly that great pond was not opened long enough and at the right time in past years to spawn blue crabs. Over the past 50 years the crab population has been consistently inconsistent.
