In order to protect Chesapeake Bay crabs, Maryland authority is offering to buy back more than half of the commercial crabbing licenses held by Marylanders. The Maryland Department of Natural Resources announced that it wants to retire up to 3,676 of the “limited crab catcher” licenses it has issued over the years and is willing to pay for them.
This buyback is said to have Maryland’s most recent bid to protect the bay’s iconic crustacean from overfishing as it recovers from a near-disastrous decline. Scientists said that although the bay’s crab population rebounded significantly last year in the wake of stringent restrictions put on commercial crabbing, but it has not fully recovered and remains vulnerable to another drop if people licensed.
It is said that Maryland has issued about 6,000 commercial crab licenses, but only about 1,800 are actively fished, according to state officials. If even a portion of the inactive crabbers get back on the water, officials fear, it could undermine the catch restrictions in place to help rebuild the crab population.
According to state officials those licensees would have been barred from crabbing commercially until the population returned to healthy levels for at least three years in a row. But the inactive crabbers thronged public meetings to protest that they were being punished even though they had not been party to the recent overfishing of the bay’s crabs. The licenses are automatically renewable and transferable, so many are given or sold to relatives or friends.
Tom O’Connell, the state fisheries director, appreciate the buyback saying it would be paid for out of $10 million in federal disaster-relief funds the state received last year to help crabbers whose incomes had been hurt by catch restrictions.
